One of Ireland's prettiest villages, transformed by a billionaire who made it his labour of love, and now the entire place is up for sale

Capitalism, from the point of view of the normal working population, is basically one big succession of hamster wheels. And you are the hamster.

Your job is to run as fast as you can, to get that wheel spinning as quickly as it can go. If you really get it motoring, your reward is to hop across to a slightly larger wheel, which you must keep spinning faster still. Succeed again, and yet another wheel awaits.

This isn't supposed to depress you, for it could be worse. Society's most miserable people don't have a wheel at all, and tend to get themselves into all sorts of trouble — a caveat that applies equally to the idle rich as the beleaguered poor. Human beings are hard-wired to hop on to those hamster wheels, and be glad of the chance to do so.

What happens, then, when you win the game? Today's billionaires apparently like getting punched in the face, running newspapers into the ground and working until their 100th birthdays, but it wasn't always this way. Andrew Carnegie sponsored museums and concert halls, and John Paul Getty curated one of the world's great art collections, as well as buying a string of country houses. And Tony Ryan, the billionaire co-founder of Ryanair, saved one of Ireland's greatest estates: the Lyons Demesne. Today, a large part of that estate is for sale: the Village at Lyons.

Ryan bought Lyons in 1996, and quickly embarked on a lengthy restoration project, spending an estimate €100 million in the process. Much of that went on the main, whose crumbling fabric was restored and upgraded, and whose priceless works of art — including 19th century Italian-style frescoes and a rare overmantel trompe l'oeil — were saved by a team of over 100 workers.

Not that it was all for art's sake: the house also got a half-Olympic sized pool and a helipad that is believed to be the only one in Ireland with a licence to operate 24 hours a day.

As grand as the house is, the village within the estate truly captured Ryan's imagination. This collection of buildings grew up in the 18th century following the opening of Ireland's Grand Canal from Dublin to Shannon, with the double lock on the site creating a natural stopping point, and a source of power.

A four-storey water mill was built, as was a pub — the Jolly Anglers Inn — houses, a police barracks, a forge, stables, a boat repair facility, farriers, a lock keeper’s house, and even a Church of Ireland boarding school. At its peak there were 79 houses and 102 famliies who called it home, with 90 barges a day passing through the loch.

The village fell on hard times as the world changed, and by the time the canal closed to freight in 1960 just eight families were left. A couple of years later the estate was sold to University College Dublin, who based their agricultural department at the main house, while the village was left to rot.

According to the agents, that actually worked in the village's favour: 'Originally from Tipperary, Ryan was a fan of Charles Kickham, whose novel Knocknagow depicted life in a deserted village much like the one he found at Lyons,' their history of the estate reads. 'Ironically, decades of neglect had preserved the village as a near-perfect archaeological time capsule — an intact, self-contained estate industrial hamlet on which to base what architectural critics would later describe not as a restoration, but a recreation.'

Ryan poured an estimated €30 million into the twenty acres around the village: he imported a four-hundred-year-old fireplace from France, and recreated a mid-nineteenth-century conservatory originally designed by Richard Turner of Kew Gardens glasshouse fame.

All the old buildings — from the forge and the police barracks to the school, the lock keeper’s house and the mill that had burnt down in 1902 — was restored. Water features were installed: fountains, waterfalls and more.

There's even a tiny church, the San Pedro Chapel, built on a small island in the lake. When Ryan died in in October 2007, it was here that he chose to be buried.

Following Ryan's death the village was converted into a hotel, a role which it still serves today — and it's utterly wonderful. A string of cottages are set amid a landscape dotted with gardens, courtyards, orchards and Ryan's beloved water features — including the old mill itself.

Within those cottages, the furnishing and fittings are utterly beguiling: there are carved wooden staircases and four-poster beds, exquisite bathrooms and centuries-old fireplaces, leather sofas and open fires. The proximity of everything to everything else brings to mind the Welsh village of Portmeirion, but with the buildings rendered in classical Georgian rural style rather than continental fantasy.

There are also all the trappings you'd expect of a five‑star hotel: dining options, a spa and more. It could be kept operational as it is, but agent David Byrne of Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty is pitching it as a residential opportunity rather than a hospitality deal. The Village at Lyons is set to become a thriving community once again.

The Village at Lyons is for sale vis Sotheby's International Realty — see more details.