Kingston Lodge, a two-storey Georgian house on 50 acres at Hayes, Navan, Co Meath, is expected to make in excess of £925,000 when it is auctioned on November 2nd by Ganly Walters. The six-bedroom house is located on the southern edge of the Boyne Valley, about halfway between the Slane road and Navan.
The guide price being quoted by Robert Ganly of the selling agents may prove to be on the conservative side, given that a smaller period house on only three acres at nearby Beauparc made £765,000 at auction last year.
Kingston Lodge is a considerably larger house with four spacious reception rooms, including a ballroom which would have a particular appeal to families who like to party on a fairly grand scale. The house was originally the centre-piece of a much larger estate when it was last sold about 16 years ago. The remaining 50 acres have the settled, comforting look of a place that has been farmed and tended for centuries. It is among the most fertile of Meath land, in an area once noted for its rich grazing but now largely in tillage.
Kingston was extensively refurbished and modernised when it was sold in 1984. It is still in good structural condition, though new owners may want to put their own stamp on it by redecorating some of the rooms. It has a particularly elegant double-height entrance hall with a winding staircase and ornate plasterwork on the ceiling.
Otherwise it has a fairly straightforward layout, with a rear hallway running virtually the full width of the house, allowing easy movement from one room to the next. The most spacious rooms, the diningroom and the ballroom, have matching bay wings, each with four full-length windows to give them architectural distinction. Both rooms have pitch pine floors and doors to match. There are fine marble fireplaces in all four reception rooms, while the family room has a rather unusual picture rail and frieze depicting equestrian scenes painted by the artist H.C. Cole.
Because some of the reception rooms are only partially furnished, they are not shown off to best advantage.
At one end of the house there is a terrific kitchen and breakfastroom, kept cosy by an Aga cooker. There are steps up to the dining area, which is separated by a row of floor units.
Upstairs, the two main bedrooms have matching full-length bay windows which keep them bright and provide limited views of the Boyne valley below. There are six bedrooms in all and three bathrooms, one en suite.
Outside, there are two yards, the inner one having a range of cut-stone buildings including four stables, a tackroom and an old coach-house.
