Our Story

Beginnings: Once upon a time a couple who dreamt of living close to home in West Limerick went for a summer’s day drive with an old map and found an old house in the country! Once owned by a renowned and locally loved horse trainer named Captain James Lysley and his wife Dawn (reputedly ‘the most beautiful woman in Ireland’) We are Katrina and John O’Connor and when we were young (and ever so slightly foolish!) we bought a 200 year old house with sky-exposing bullet holes above the main staircase and a myriad of hidden refurbishment challenges! The original haphazard layout allowed the estate agent to deftly steer us past a whole four-room section that we never laid eyes on until after the house was ours….

Moving Home: We had lived and worked in Dublin and abroad for many years and had always wanted to live close to our parents and hopefully start a family of our own. It took a long time to get there but by the winter of 2014-15 we had moved into a small number of mostly undecorated rooms. In January 2015, with snow softly blanketing the fields, a little Limerick girl was born - we called her Esther-Mae, after her two grandmothers and her name very much becomes her…

Family Life: As soon as Esther-Mae was born, Katrina said this old house has to go! It really was the most impractical house for a small baby and knowing that we would always be a family of only three it looked for a while as if we would leave and build a new house somewhere else. However, an old annex building that was once the subject of a demolition debate saved the day and became the happiest little home for three people and a slightly crazy puppy named Ziggy (Stardust) while the entire three floors of the main house were utterly transformed with warm, bright and uplifting colours everywhere - even the old front door was changed to purple: walk on through and take a look around….