A very big (cheapish) house in the country

So one of my readers wrote me a perfectly civil email to say that, much as they liked last week's three Borders properties, the post lacked my "usual storytelling, invented narratives and edges", adding: "I think people like you weaving tales and fantasies about the properties." 
Fair point, I felt.
There is a technical tension in that the more properties I pick, the more pictures I then use, and the fewer words I'm allowed (on the Substack version, that is. Blogger let's me twitter on forever).
And because a property has to be pretty damn special for me to devote a whole post to it (e.g. this or this), I've drifted into thinking I need to show you a set of properties each week, increasingly three. Which puts me in that pictures v. words tension and so I find myself focusing on the information words. As last week.
But actually that's not the whole reason for my missing "tales and fantasies". I think maybe it's that it's also getting harder to hang onto the storytelling in a world that just seems just so cruel, so cold. Rewriting information about a house seems easier than imagining the lived lives that it housed and might hold again.
Sorry about the darker turn there, but at least you know this is me writing and not Muse, or Claude, or AIother.
Shall we look at a property?
Comeragh House is a very big house in the country. The country being county Waterford in Ireland.
It's had a bit of a rough time, and there's a seriously dodgy past we'll get to in a minute, but first some pictures of this quite gorgeous Irish dame.

The house was built in 1820 or so, possibly for John Palliser. He lived there sporadically and retired to it, dying there, in his library, after a long walk.
Palliser had been part of the wealthy Protestant Anglo-Irish gentry hoovering up the 'big houses' and land wealth of Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

 A charming adventurer who'd failed to finish university or apply himself to work in Ireland, he traveled to the wildlands of North America and Canada in the 1850s, exploring, hunting with his white, half-wolf dog, leading expeditions and meeting with First Nations groups as a fellow hunter and horseman. There's a great piece by Eamonn McKee on Pallister and more here on his place in Canadian history. 
He died without marrying and the house, along with other family properties eventually passed via a niece to the Fairholme family.
In the 1920s, Comeragh House became one of the 275, mostly Protestant-owned, country houses targeted for destruction by the IRA during the Civil War. It was torched in 1923, Pallister's papers and house records burning with it, but rebuilt by the Fairholmes in 1925, according to its Heritage listing.
There's a long gap and then Comeragh is bought in 1964 by Pieter Menten, a wealthy Dutch art collector, and his wife.
They lived in splendid isolation on their Irish estate for a decade before Menten is revealed as a Nazi war criminal linked to the deaths of Polish Jews.

He's tried and jailed in Holland and, while this is going on, Comeragh House is torched again - this time reputedly by Israeli Mossad agents rather than the IRA; Menten's art collection having already disappeared.
After his death in 1987, Menten's wife puts the now pretty-wrecked estate up for sale and it's bought by a champagne-loving English couple who spend seven years restoring it to glory. Much of what they did - the glorious bathroom ceilings, the richly-painted rooms, is still there. Of sorts.

They put in on the market in 2011 for an optimistic 3m euro and, whatever it eventually sold for, its new owners don't seem to have shared the renovation drive, given how much has drifted into disrepair.
Now it's up for sale at just 850k euro (around £720k) - all 22 rooms, stables, steward's house, stone outbuildings, and 40 (yes, 40) acres of estate.

 
This is the sort of beefy renovation project that you pitch to Channel 4.
This is also a very beautiful house in a very beautiful part of coastal Ireland that's had a bit of a rough life - two too many attempts to burn it down and long periods of being left behind. Fingers crossed it finds owners rather than investors.
On the market through Sherry Fitzgerald at 850k euro. More on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

Obviously, this comes next...

Three typical Scottish Borders do-ups

I've been to the border. It's why I missed last week's posting (sorry). We stayed in a dour cottage in a wood near Coldstream and, on another day, sat with coffee and the sun warming our faces at St Abbs' sweet little harbour.
There are a lot of towns with 'Cold..' in the name in that part of the world, we noticed. It was mostly apt.
But obviously it means that today I'll be showing you some Scottish Borders wrecks and the three I've chosen are fairly typical of the area - a mix of grand Victorian villas and solid and stubby stone cottages.
In descending order, price and size-wise, we'll start with this gorgeous five-bedroom villa (above and below) in popular and artsy Peebles, around 20 miles from Edinburgh. It's in a conservation area and sits on a main road (the A72 as it passes through the town) with pubs and restaurants and shops close by, but rear views over the hills. And a lovely big garden.

Lots of original features to work with (all those fireplaces, that plasterwork...), but also a fair bit of stripping out of dated kitchens and decor. And you'll need to add at least one more bathroom - those five bedrooms are at the expense of a proper bathroom; you just have a weird strip of a shower room. 
On the market through Savills at offers over £525k (recently reduced). Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
Next is this promising four bedroom detached village house. That traditional red stone and chunky lintels give the house a lovely, solid Scot feel. 

It's in the small village of Lilliesleaf, basically one road with pretty houses and cul-de-sacs hanging off it and rolling countryside all around. Your nearest big town is Selkirk and there's a train station at Tweedbank, 20 minutes drive away. Edinburgh is an hour or so drive.
While it's listed as a four bedroom house, two of those bedrooms are in the single storey (and less attractive) extension and, while that offers options for muti-generation or accessible living, I'd worry about the damp issues. Maybe think about airbnb-ing that section?

Rooms don't have the size and grandeur of our Peebles villa but I love the windows (aside from the missing one...), and all those handsome fireplaces. And lots of scope too for renovating that big garden.

On the market through Cullen Kilshaw with a guide price of £199k. More details and pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My final pick is a two bedroom cottage in the ugly-named East Flemington, close to the coastal village of Burnmouth and drivable to Eyemouth. You can see the sea from your front garden and gorgeous countryside from the back.

Downstairs is a good-size cozy lounge, kitchen and separate dining room, plus an added-on shower room and stone store. There's a dated conservatory and scope to get rid of it and the extension to build something breathable and wrap around to really use those views.

Two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs, and overall more tired than wrecked renovation-wise.
On the market at OIRO £170k, also through agents Cullen Kilshaw. More on their website here and on Rightmove here.