The Great House Revival (2018)

Hugh Wallace meets people transforming derelict properties into modern home, beginning with an Australian cabinet maker restoring a Co Mayo house with 110 rooms.

Murray Rees has always wanted to live in an elegant old townhouse and couldn’t believe his luck when he found one he could afford in North Inner City Dublin. Buildings in this area were used as bedsits and had fallen into total disrepair. Murray is keen to save this 1840s building and return it to its full potential.

Ronan Fitzpatrick and his fiancé Mary Rahill are restoring a local two-room schoolhouse built in the 1890s as their family home. It has extra significance for Ronan as he and his father before him went to school there as children.

Irene McDermott has a strong personal connection to the cottage she is restoring on the Inishowen Peninsula in Co.Donegal. Her great, great, grandmother lived here and it has been in her family since famine times.

Goretti Foreau and her French husband, Eric, have decided that now that their older kids are in college, they want a lifestyle change and so they are moving lock, stock and barrel from Dublin city to the rolling hills of Rathrum, Co. Wicklow. They’ve bought an old farmhouse and agricultural outbuildings that need significant and extensive restoration work to become habitable.

Belfast born Garry and Anne Wilson have lived and worked in the UK all of their adult lives. They have always wanted a base in Ireland and in 2016 they were in the market for a restoration project and came across Belvelly Tower House in Cobh Co Cork.

Dublin born Fiona Kelly has serious ambition. Having purchased a dilapidated Georgian terraced house in the heart of Phibsborough in north Dublin, she has a mammoth project on her hands. With slanted door frames, crooked floors and a tumbling roof, Fiona and her building contractor friend Philip, have taken on a building on the brink of collapse.

With three children all under the age of 5, Belinda and Lorcan Carpenter have decided to convert three farmyard barns into their dream family home. Set in the picturesque hills of the Wicklow Carlow border on the grounds of Belinda’s childhood home Munny House, the barns need extensive renovation and conversion work in order to transform the dilapidated donkey house into a bespoke family home.

This week, Karen Whyte and her partner Donnacha Curley, purchased Grove House a few years ago with a plan to save it from dereliction. Empty for years, the building was damp, water-damaged, and largely unloved. A native of Westport, Karen is keen to restore the building back to the grand home it once was.

Ronan and Charles are the proud owners of Kilglass House in Longford, an 18th century former rectory in dire need of rescuing. Born and reared in London, Ronan is fulfilling his immigrant parent’s dream of returning home to Ireland.

Borrisoleigh native Frances Doherty kept a close eye on the sale of her childhood doctor’s house over the years before purchasing it in 2017 for €67,000. Together with her husband, Tom, the couple’s dream is to create their forever home in Frances’s childhood village. With a coach house and numerous outbuildings, Frances plans to have the project finished in time for her imminent retirement.

Carolyn and Michael McDonnell, together with Carolyn’s brother Henry, joined together to purchase this expansive property in Castletown Geoghegan. Built during the famine, the property was last in use as a hotel but it had deteriorated at a surprisingly fast rate over its three unoccupied years.

Rob has a slim budget and a tight deadline in which to transform his bargain-price Victorian villa into a family home.

Hugh Wallace meets Tiktok star Maryrose, who’s renovating her grandmother’s former home, where her family have lived for five generations.

Kelly and Paddy plan to build a comfortable modern home within the walls of an 1830’s mill. It’s missing every one of its 43 windows and most of its roof and floors, but these thirty-somethings see beyond the ruination and set about converting it.

Paul and his wife Judith are restoring Anderson’s pub shop in the hopes of creating their new home while also reinvigorating the local village. But progress is painfully slow and they are forced to take on most of the manual labour on this straggling, tumbledown building themselves.

Lindsay and Kevin have left their suburban home in search of country air and space. They’re throwing themselves into a loving restoration of a traditional thatch cottage and barn in the hopes of creating their forever home, filled with old country charm.

Hugh meets historic re-enactors, Liz and Gordon, who have travelled from America to create their retirement home in an Irish castle. It’s roofless and in ruins but can they save this historic building before it falls to the ground?

Hugh follows couple Mary-Claire and Sully as they transform a Georgian house into a modern home while paying homage to the building’s rich past.

Architect duo Rob and Alfonso take on the task of restoring their historic terraced house into a stylish, contemporary home. Can they achieve their dream of creating a unique home and workspace with the perfect balance of old and new?

Paul buys back his former family home and takes on the mammoth task of restoring it himself. With dry rot, a leaking roof and rotten beams standing in his way, can he save his old childhood home, and his mother’s pride and joy, from ruin?

Hugh meets designers Robin and Eoin on their journey to convert a Victorian schoolhouse into a chic family home. However, after delays and setbacks, can they transform this functional space into the home of their dreams?

Hugh Wallace is back to chart the highs and lows of home restorations in Ireland. In episode 1 Hugh is at the restoration of a former Post Office, in Butlerstown, Co. Cork

Restaurateur Aoibheann MacNamara is embarking on an ambitious but sensitive restoration of an old Land Commission cottage in the middle of the protected environment of the Burren.

Lough Key, Co. Roscommon: A derelict cowshed on a grand estate finds new life as a contemporary family home.

In episode 4, Hugh Wallace meets artist Cora Murphy who has taken on the challenge of restoring a city townhouse and shop front, on Douglas Street, Cork.

Hugh Wallace is in Rockhouse, Co. Cork where school teacher Grace Cotter and her landscape gardener husband John are restoring what they think is a modest Georgian farmhouse.

Hugh Wallace visits returned Asset Manager Eoghan O'Riain who is restoring a former seaside guesthouse in his native Rathmullan, Co Donegal.

1800s Farm House & Sheds, St. Mullins, Co. Carlow: Carlow man Tommy McDonald and his Welsh partner Emily Lewis decide to transform the ruinous property into their first home.

26-year-old Kieran is determined to buck the trend of leaving rural Kerry to find work and a home by taking on the ambitious challenge of renovating his Grandmother's old cottage.

After working two jobs and diligent saving for his first home in Kilkenny, homeowner Sean Hickey now has the keys to transform his dream home in this week's Great House Revival.

Architect Hugh Wallace helps Roscommon couple Mary Morris and Colm Dowd are creating their first home together - the Old Bank in Elphin

Architect Hugh Wallace meets Kilkenny-based Trish Duffe, who is downsizinig from her four-bedroom home in Carlow to a smaller house in Kilkenny, closer to her elderly parents

Jill Leavy trades her Dublin home hunt for a bold renovation, transforming her dad's abandoned 1932 primary school in Coralstown into her first home