The Langes took on a Wicklow ruin to develop one of Ireland’s first true organic farms, with partially castellate main house
Address: Ballinroan Lower, Co Wicklow
Asking price: €990,000
Agent: Savills (01) 6181300
When Penny and Udo Lange bought Ballinroan House in Co Wicklow back in 1983, they had to hack their way through dense foliage to find it.
“We couldn’t even see the house. It was completely enveloped in a thick jungle of cherry laurel. We had to cut our way in,” Penny Lange says.
“When we got to the front door, we saw that the windows were broken, there were holes in the roof, more holes in the upstairs floors, no electricity, no water, no bathroom facilities or heating and everything worth taking, down to brass door handles, had been removed or stolen.”
The partly castellate exterior of Ballinroan
Over a decade previous, the run-down 18th-century house had been inherited by Ireland’s youngest fashion designer, Clodagh Phibbs. Now a renowned interior designer in the US, Phibbs rocked 1950s Ireland when she launched her own clothing label at just 17 years old.
Phibbs never lived here, however, and sold Ballinroan to an investor who was only interested in renting out the farmland that came with it. This led to the house degrading further over the years following.
Former owner Clodagh Phibbs, a fashion designer turned interiors expert
The 1970s had seen Penny and Udo Lange meet and fall in love as workers on an organic farm in Norway. “We believed in what we we were doing and we wanted to own our own organic farm somewhere,” Penny says.
“I had done a very naughty thing and married Udo in a registry office in Norway. My dad had had a heart attack, and I realised he wouldn’t be around for ever so I said to Udo: ‘Maybe my Dad should meet his son-in-law?’”
Travelling to Ireland (Penny is from Kinsale), German-born Udo was surprised at the quality of Irish farmland and the length of the growing season here, so they decided to save up to buy land in Ireland.
The couple ended up meeting another German national, Jochen Henke, who was renting farmland in Wicklow outside Baltinglass and he needed some help. “Udo became his milker,” laughs Penny. “And we ended up renting a cottage nearby.”
From doors from the living room to the garden
At some point, the investor decided to sell Ballinroan House and the farm land attached. Five farmers including Henke, who had been renting the land, decided to put together a consortium to buy it and then divide it up among them, according to who was leasing what.
However, no one wanted the crumbling house and the 17 acres of poorest land attached to it. So Henke invited Penny and Udo to join them.
“The locals knew that we were a consortium, but there was some subterfuge involved. We bid openly up to a point, then a solicitor our group had appointed unbeknownst to other bidders took over. One of our farmers had to remove his hat as a signal to him to stop bidding.”
Aerial view of the property, which sits on 40 acres
The collective of lease holders was successful, and the land was divided up accordingly. Penny and Udo were handed the deeds for their acres and the house, which by now was in awful condition.
“We moved into the upstairs first. Udo, with help from his dad, fixed the floors, the windows and the doors. Then we did the upper floor, where we lived for years. Downstairs was next, a little bit at a time. We finished the living room last of all in 2012, so it took us 30 years to fix it up. Udo has been incredible. Even today there’s nothing he can’t do. He’s the builder and the fixer, and I’m the interiors, design and sales expert.”
The kitchen/dining room
There is no record of when Ballinroan House was built, and it might have been an incorporation of an even older building. But its earliest mention is in a 1757 lease from then-owner Richard Baldwin to a Thomas Greene.
A contemporary of Jonathan Swift, Baldwin was made provost of Trinity College in 1717, a position he held until his death the following year. He willed all his property, including Ballinroan House, to the college. Presumably, the latter sold it, as Reverend RF Greene is listed as its owner in 1844, and a JF Greene owned it by 1884.
The house is of an unusual design, and includes a partly castellated roofline contained between two double storey bows. There are ice cellars, and the Langes found a complex greenhouse heating mechanism when their two-year-old daughter disappeared one day.
“We looked everywhere for her and eventually found a hole in foliage under where the winter garden was,” Penny says. “It led down underground to a chamber, and she was there playing in a room with a fireplace and a heating system off it, for warming the long-gone green houses.”
Penny and Udo got to work on their organic farm dream. Initially, they kept sheep and cattle to improve the land. Gradually, they acquired two more plots of adjoining land to expand the farm. Once the land had been enriched, they added raised beds and more than 10,000 sq ft of polytunnels.
Udo and Penny Lange on their farm. Photo: Barbara McCarthy
They have since grown salads, tomatoes, peppers, squashes, courgettes, potatoes and other produce, which they largely sell into markets in Dublin. More recently, the Langes have converted a good portion of the land into native woodland.
In their 42 year tenure at Ballinroan, the couple have also raised six children. “It was a wild place for them to grow up in,” says Penny.
The sitting room, with French doors to the garden
“Our children are all adults now and living abroad, and we have grandchildren all over the world. As farmers, we can’t get away for more than four days. So we have decided it’s time to pass Ballinroan on to new owners, and go visiting our grandchildren,” she says.
Accommodation includes an entrance hall, a sitting room, a large kitchen and dining room, a boot room, utility, shower and storage, all on the ground floor. Upstairs has views across the Wicklow hills and there are four double bedrooms, a study (which could be bedroom five) and a family bathroom.
The master bedroom
An entire return, which is not in use, could be converted to additional accommodation.
The original farmyard with granite outbuildings and the old walled garden are still here. There’s also a barn and a treehouse on the land, with 25 acres of the 40 in native woodland.
“We have put our heart and soul into this place and now it’s time to pass it on. Hopefully to a family” says Penny.
Savills seeks €990,000.