William and Emily Bunbury have transformed their family’s 1,000-acre estate in Carlow by sparing no expense for guests – hosting lavish events and activities, and catering for weddings and weekend breaks.

He’s not exactly Monarch of the Glen, but William Bunbury is the archetypal dutiful son who takes on the ownership and running of a country estate that has been in the family for generations.

In 2005,William and his wife Emily featured in the RTE series The Mentor, with entrepreneurs Jay Bourke and Jeanne Bolger advising the hard-working couple on how to turn the family estate, Lisnavagh in Co Carlow, from an ailing concern haemorrhaging money to a profitable, sustainable operation.

Not all of Bourke and Bolger’s advice found favour with the Bunburys. There has been no Electric Picnic-style event or residential development within the 1,000 acre estate. However, three years after their mentors left the building, William and Emily are ahead of financial targets, almost breaking even a year before they expected to, and - like most country estate owners - constantly exploring new means of growing income.

Viewers of The Mentor will remember Emily battling with dry rot in the centuries-old Tudor Gothic property and undertaking a complete re-wiring of the house for the first time in 50 years.

The stress and frustrations of such a big project were palpable, particularly as William’s parents, Lord and Lady Rathdonnell, were still living there while a new home on the estate was built for them. ‘‘It was a huge emotional and physical move for William’s parents,” says Emily. ‘‘Tempers were frayed at times. But thankfully they’re very happy in their new home.”

A quarter of a million euro was spent refurbishing Lisnavagh House, which was one of Powerscourt and Johnstown House architect Daniel Robertson’s last projects in Ireland. The result is a special country house which impressively ranked 11th in GQ magazine’s ‘100 Best Things In the World’ last December.

Lisnavagh hosts up to ten weddings a year and can be rented in its entirety by individuals who want to feel like the lord and lady of the manor for a weekend.

The estate is situated just outside Rathvilly, on the border between Carlow and Wicklow.

Wedding guests and weekenders enjoy clear views of the Blackstairs Mountains and Mount Leinster to the south, and the Wicklow Hills to the east. They also have access to 14 acres of ‘Pleasure Grounds’, lovingly restored by Lady Rathdonnell during the 1970s and 1980s.

William and Emily describe Lisnavagh as a ‘‘house that loves people’’, coming alive with atmosphere, individuality and cosiness as enormous log fires are lit and bottles of wine opened in the library.

While other country houses have been given a modern touch in recent times, Lisnavagh is exactly as an old country house should be, brimming with character, an eclectic mix of family portraits and heirlooms, and a strong sense of the landed gentry who settled there. It’s a house that invites you to linger.

Lisnavagh House was built in the 1600s and was originally three times its current size. Two-thirds of the property was knocked down in the 1950s, when roof rates and domestic upkeep proved too intense.

The history remains: the Bunburys are descended from the Baron de St Pierre, a Norman knight who served with William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Part of the family settled in Carlow as tenants of the Duke of Ormonde, purchasing the house in 1702 and becoming part of Ireland’s ruling elite in the late 18th century.

Lisnavagh House is now many things: as well as hosting weddings, corporate events and private rentals, it’s home to the Timber Project, a unique Irish business (and, one guesses, a labour of love for William) which supplies native, fully traceable Irish hardwood to furniture makers, wood turners and DIY experts, and maintains a comprehensive database of all its wood.

The Bunburys have just dipped their toes into producing the ‘Lisnavagh Collection’, beginning with Bunbury Storyboards - wooden chopping boards that sell in Kilkenny Design. With a touch that belies the Bunburys’ organic approach to their family estate, each chopping board has a serial number which allows owners to find out exactly which tree their board came from and why the tree was felled.

The Lisnavagh estate also earns an income from agriculture, with its working farm let to tenants. A number of cottages are available to rent long term on the estate, while the farmyard (where William and Emily live in a house with their two children) is also home to workshops for sculptors, a blacksmith, designer sister Sasha and her writer husband Tom Sykes.

Together with her work at the house,Emily also runs Tailormade Ireland, which organises fishing, shooting and deer-stalking trips for visitors to Ireland.

‘‘The work can seem endless,” says Emily, who’s responsible for the smooth running of the house for guests. ‘‘But the idea is that guests come here and really make the place their own for a few days. It’s not a hotel, you can’t book in for a night,but the plus side of that is that guests aren’t tied into hotel-style packages.

‘‘Weddings involve a lot of work because wedding parties rightly expect a lot. For private rentals, we literally hand the house over but with weddings, we organise flowers, offer breakfast and a host of other services.

‘‘Private rental guests can completely self-cater or we can recommend private caterers. The project I would like to complete next is opening up the original avenue to the house, which is a mile and a half long, but that will be a big job.”

Of course, depending on your view of Ireland’s landed gentry, opening up a private house like Lisnavagh to paying guests is either a blessing or a curse. Doing so was initially hard for 39-year-old William, his brother, writer and historian Turtle Bunbury, and sister Sasha. Rooms that they spent their childhoods playing in are now enjoyed by other people. But it’s an economic reality that all estate owners have had to face.

‘‘My father and mother ran the estate for 40 years,” says William, who studied at Cirencester Royal Agricultural College in England and managed a country estate in Lancashire before returning to Ireland about six years ago.

‘‘My parents were struggling at that point,” he says. ‘‘The estate was haemorrhaging money, to the tune of around £50,000 each year. They had opened the gardens to the public and featured the house in Hidden Ireland for a while, but neither was really paying. It was a question of what could be done to keep the estate going.

‘‘It was the classic cash-poor, asset-rich scenario,” he says. ‘‘There we were with an estate worth millions and I didn’t have the money to go to the pub, it was crazy.

‘‘We invested €250,000 in the house, with entire borrowings of almost a million euro, including the cost of building a new home for our parents. If we had developed part of the land residentially, it would have raised capital to pay off the interest on our loans but I was resistant to that idea,” he says.

‘‘Our approach is more slowly, slowly, than borrowing huge amounts of money. As things stand, we’re improving income. I was flabbergasted to look back on the original business plan recently and see that we have achieved our projected targets: five weddings last year, ten this year, hopefully 20 next year, one or two corporate events - building to three or four next year - and now, marketing the house as an exclusive private rental option.”

Lisnavagh House is run as a partnership between William and his parents,who have slowly been passing over assets to him. He now owns the main house and half of the estate’s 1,000 acres. While the economic downturn has seen one recent wedding cancellation and a very quiet corporate sector, the Bunburys hope Lisnavagh House is upmarket enough to be recession-proof.

‘‘It was difficult for William to open the house up initially, but now he loves it,” says Ally Bunbury, Lisnavagh’s PR woman.

‘‘He sees that the house is on the up. From the days of, ‘Oh God, what on earth are we going to do with the place?’, it’s doing well and there are lots of exciting possibilities.”

Stay at Lisnavagh
For further information about weddings or private rentals at Lisnavagh House, go to www.lisnavagh.com. Private rentals for three nights for up to 14 people cost €3,350 in high season, €2,650 in low season. A week’s private rental costs €8,000 in high season.

Weddings in Lisnavagh’s main house cost €5,000 for up to three days’ exclusive rental with additional costs of between €80-€125 per person per night for accommodation.

Weddings for up to 80 guests can be accommodated in the main house, while marquees can be erected in the gardens.