A pub owner with an eye for the exotic is selling his 14th century Co Louth castle on 30 acres of glorious garden

KNOCKABBEY Castle is an eight-bedroom castellated property set on 30 acres of national showcase gardens outside Ardee in Co Louth.

Situated about nine miles from the historic town, Knockabbey weaves a stone and brick tapestry that is influenced by many episodes in Irish history, starting with the monks who first manipulated its waters 1000 years ago. They were the demesne’s first inhabitants – moving from the nearby metropolis of Louth Village, then ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, to the pastoral splendour of Knockabbey.

The house is under-done rather than overstated. a family could happily knock about it without feeling restricted by its architecture.

Knitted into the fabric of the house are several building styles; the oldest, a tower built in 1399 with a £10 grant from Dublin Castle to protect the north-west corner of the Pale, was enlarged by the Bellows family in 1650, who added a six-bay, three-storey Queen Anne extension.

By the late 1700s the castle came under the ownership of the O’Reillys, a family who could trace their roots back to Niall of the Nine Hostages. They put their stamp on the house, remodelling it and adding Gothic windows.

The additions to the east and south, including the contents of the O’Reilly family library, were lost when the IRA set fire to it in 1923. What survived was rebuilt in 1925.

The property is asking €2.5 million through joint agents Knight Frank and Hassett Fitzsimons.

It was a Sunday drive that convinced owner, former publican, Cyril O’Brien, to pay £475,000 for the historic building back in 1998.

That it needed work didn’t deter O’Brien, a man who transformed Dublin’s pubscape in the 1980s by introducing a destination gay bar, The George, and turning a certain generation onto dance music through his club Sides.

In the 1990s he introduced the capital to the principles of the super-pub and boutique hotel with the respective launches of Zanzibar and The Mercantile. Flourishes of both styles are evident throughout the house.

The restoration drama wasn’t as traumatic as his friends and family had warned, he says, but it was way more costly. A basic refurbishment turned into a large-scale restoration. O’Brien says he paid £250,000 in professional fees alone never mind materials and labour.

The main entrance is via the tower house into a hall with vaulted ceilings and a flagstone floor. A wood-burning stove sits in the fireplace while display units showcase costumes made by Emmy and Oscar-winning costumier, Joan Bergin for a Millennium house party.

The Gothic hall has a red quarry tile floor, ornate staircase and stained glass roof light. To the left is a large eat-in kitchen with dog baskets a-plenty, a four-door Aga and a linen cupboard from upstairs now a large larder.

Traverse the hall to interconnecting reception rooms, a sittingroom and adjoining diningroom. An adjacent utility room has an ice machine, glass washer, bathrooms and storage.

Down the hall is the music room, two rooms opened into one where the star feature is the pair of wooden pillars O’Brien discovered during the refurbishment. A bar and tea rooms complete the ground floor accommodation.

Back in the original tower a stone “trip-step” staircase leads upstairs to the propertys chapel and on up to an interpretative centre.

Climb up onto the ramparts and enjoy 360 degree views of the surrounding rolling hills. The view also shows the number of fine trees on the property – all sheltering the house.

In its current configuration, the house has eight bedrooms, six of which are en suite. Most are decorated in a traditional style – the exception being the Thai room, which is fitted out with a raised platform bed and has windows veiled by reed blinds.

But it is the property’s sylvan setting that makes this house special. Restored by Finola Reed using some monies from the Great Gardens of Ireland Restoration Fund, there are 30 acres of gardens set out in lawn and wild flower meadows. The meadows have paths mown through them so you can get up close and personal with the estate’s numerous specimen trees – including one of the largest-girthed tulip trees in these islands.

Buttercup-laden, the meadows tap into our inner child and make you want to kick off your shoes and go running through the thigh-high foliage.

A Victorian tea house, a stone-built fern house and an octagonal gazebo: all offer sheltered settings from which to admire the gardens, their Italian-style ornamental canals, pergolas wrapped in white wisteria and walls hung with fruit trees of apple, pear and plum.

Business-motivated buyers should know that the gardens, while gorgeous, havent delivered the tourist numbers O’Brien had hoped for.

He ran a tea rooms on the property for some years but there simply wasn’t enough interest, he admits. Neither, he believes, are any of the rooms sufficiently big to appeal to the wedding market.

This is a place that celebrates the sound of silence. As the crow flies Knockabbey is two miles from the N2 and about seven from the M1 – yet the drone from either is blissfully absent.

The house comes with a two-bedroom gate lodge, a replica of the original, a one-bedroom apartment and stables where further accommodation could be considered.

It is approximately 76km from Dublin Airport and 105km to Belfast Airport. Off-peak, Dublin city centre is an hour’s drive.

Owner O’Brien is staying in the area. This time though he’s building a thoroughly modern eco-friendly house from scratch.