The village at Lyons, near Celbridge, which includes cottages, a clock tower and a chapel, covers 20 acres. It was part of the larger 600-acre estate that was bought by Mr Ryan in 1996. He spent an estimated €100m restoring it.
The village currently operates as a spa resort and wedding venue. The sale is being arranged by Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty.
Lyons was originally a milling village that was built beside the Grand Canal. In 1962, the estate was bought by University College Dublin’s veterinary faculty, which used the farmland for student education, but the cut-stone buildings in the village were unused.
The flour mill was destroyed by fire in 1904.
“The village at that point was in a state of complete disrepair,” said David Byrne, managing director of Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty. “It became Tony Ryan’s life’s passion to restore the village.”
“We’re selling the private estate village to an individual,” he added. “It can be a flagship leisure destination, a creative retreat – or for someone looking for a long-term heritage investment.”
The village was last sold in 2016, for a reported €6m
He said it is expected that the purchaser will be an international one.
The estate includes 12 cottages and apartments, most with two bedrooms, and four lodges with five or more bedrooms, giving a total of 47 bedrooms.
There is a dining hall that seats 120 people, an event space, bar, club room and coffee shop. There is also a garden room, a spa, a Victorian-style conservatory and landscaped gardens.
“The village at Lyons sits beside Lyons Hill, an early medieval royal site that was the home of the Kings of Leinster from about 760AD,” the Lisney Sotheby sales notice says.
“Originally developed in the 18th and 19th centuries as a thriving canal-side milling village, the buildings that form today’s 20-acre estate evolved into a village in the 1820s, which had the Jolly Angler Inn, a police barracks, a lock yard, a Church of Ireland school and a towering four-storey watermill.
The restored former milling village of Lyons, near Celbridge, Co Kildare
“The flour mill was run by Joseph P Shackleton, a relative of the famous Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.”
The auctioneers say opportunities to buy a complete historic village “are almost unheard of”.
Tony Ryan left the Lyons Demesne to his wife after his death in 2007, and it was valued at €60m when it came up for sale in 2009.
Finding a buyer during the financial crash proved impossible, and the asking price was cut to €25m in 2012. It was taken off the market by the Ryan family two years later, and remains in the ownership of Tony’s son, Shane.
The village was offered for sale in 2014 by Declan Ryan, Tony’s son, through Colliers International. It was bought in 2016 by financier Barry O’Callaghan, owner of the Cliff House Hotel in Waterford, for a reported €6m.
Writing about the restoration of the village in his book Aer Dogs, journalist Tom Lyons said “no expense” was spared by Tony Ryan, who “installed a 400-year-old fireplace from France, and a model of a plane he owned was hung over a fine wooden bar.
“Ryan also restored a tiny parish church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which was to become his final resting place after he died.”