A beautiful formal garden greets visitors to the O’Hara’s otherwise laid-back and informal Georgian mansion. Simon and Christina O’Hara, the seventh generation of the family to live within its robust walls, have a welcoming buzz as the ‘gracious’ hosts. They invite guests ‘to feel that they are visiting old friends’. Bursting with fresh flowers from the award-winning garden, the large, antique-filled rooms have the peaceful air that comes with being sheltered by a vast patchwork of wood and pastureland. Bedrooms eschew TV and radio, in favour of newspapers and a small library of novels to be enjoyed from a chaise longue and high old bed, or while luxuriating in the 1900s canopied bath and green-tiled grotto found in one of the rooms. Irish country dinners, served under the watchful eye of 18th-century family portraits, have limited choice but the freshest ingredients. Most of the produce is grown and reared within 200 yards of the dining room: the ultimate farm-to-fork. At breakfast, home-baked potato bread and fresh eggs from the neighbour’s hens are ideal high-grade fuel for exploring Yeats country. (CG, and others)