“Part quaint hill-station home and part charming old English club, drenched in the colours and patterns that define India.”

A handsome colonial-era bungalow on Gray’s Hill in Coonoor, Nenagh is over 115 years old and came with a storied past of its own. It is named for an old fort town in Ireland and part of the built heritage of this hill-station in the shola forests of the Nilgiris. Since 2021, Nenagh has been sensitively restored to preserve its original character, and offer a space where more personal histories can take root and flower. It is a living repository of the Rajaram-Abraham family’s childhood memories, lifelong passions and favourite dinner party stories.

Nenagh was renovated to be respectful of its architectural lineage, as well as its ecological reality and regional terroir. The original, immaculate bones of bungalow still shine through in the perfect symmetry of the tin roof covered in baked Mangalore tiles, the elegant lines of the fireplaces, and the 300-year-old woodland tree in the garden, which is also the ancestral habitat of a family of Indian Crested Porcupines. Other classic 19th-century elements preserved include the airy wrap-around verandah, the checkerboard marble floor and the scalloped wooden eaves.

 Nenagh has also acquired new creature comforts in the form of a mudroom at the entrance, a sunroom that’s a bird-watcher’s paradise, a study and that overlooks the garden and a private sit-out for the master bedroom, perfect for moonlit conversations. The garden is sweet with the fragrance of nostalgia. From the Regency-era rose garden to the heady tropical bloom of the magnolia tree to the colourful profusion of flowers straight out of a Mughal bagh, every part of it holds a special memory.

 The restoration has been mindful not only of Nenagh’s past but also of its ability to flourish in the years to come. It has created sustainable systems that harvest rainwater, protect bio-diversity and optimise the natural advantages of the home, like its abundance of soft sunlight and crisp mountain air. These last two are now invited into the home more generously through bay windows, skylights and–the pièce de résistance — the glass roof of the jewel-like conservatory alight with the glow of Indian glass paintings.

Nenagh provides a sun-warmed canvas for the layers of art stories told throughout the bungalow. Textiles narrate the most meaningful journeys on which they were collected, from the hand-woven mashrus to the Christopher Moore cotton toiles to the Uzbeki silk ikats. Old aquatints, rare maps, archival photography and vintage water-colour botanical illustrations speak to an abiding fascination with Indian history. The art weaves many more threads into the conversation with Persian miniatures, Bhil tribal art, Andhra leather puppets and a panoply of contemporary artists, like Rithika Merchant, V Ramesh and Varunika Saraf.

 Scattered through the home are works of bespoke art made for Nenagh’s unique vantage points. Elements like tiles, wallpaper and even fabrics were customised inside the PRD design studio to infuse the interiors with warmth, vitality and an irresistible note of whimsy. 

 The hill-stations homes of the 19th century were designed to recreate the charms of the faraway English countryside on the cool slopes of the Nilgiris. At Nenagh, this original promise is overlaid with the colours, patterns and wild things specific to this corner of the blue mountain range, and the family who have made it home.