An Irish Escape

From playing tourist in your home city to off-grid cabins and design-led hideaways, here are our recommendations for a different kind of staycation.

Hidden in a land where mountains, valleys and lakes collide, Limehouse Cottage serves up simple luxury living with one hand and raw, organic beauty with the other. Ride horses across Rossbeigh beach, climb the jagged peaks of Macgillycuddy’s Reeks and skinny-dip in the glacial waters below. Here is a self-catering hideaway that embraces Ireland’s elements in all their untamed glory. Built to house farmhands at one end and animals at the other, old photographs of this once-thatched Irish cottage date back to the 1800s when it was razed in a fire. Tenderly brought back to life, the cottage was reconstructed with local stone, lime rendered and insulated in hemp so that it could breathe with the natural elements. In its latest form, two modern extensions offer luxury rustic living. On one side, a green iron barn with curved sides echoes the Kerry hills, on the other, a glass box with kaleidoscopic views over Coomasaharn Lake and the horseshoe of mountains that tower behind it.

Read more in the August issue…