Shane Horgan: ‘I’ll always be a Meath man from Bellewstown’

The sale of the family home is often a melancholy event and marks a transition from togetherness to separation.

Parents grow older, the children move out and the nest is emptied. Homes that were once alive with the din of growing families fall silent and are sold.

For former rugby international Shane Horgan and his actress sister, Sharon, the sadness of selling up the family home in Bellewstown, Co Meath is tempered by pride in their upbringing.

“My abiding memory is that we had a childhood that was as idyllic as we could have had. It was a lovely place to grow up and to go back to,” Shane remembers. For Sharon the house has “lots of great memories. It was exciting to grow up there”.

Shane is as old as his family home. He was just born when the family moved into the 1970s-style bungalow in the summer of 1978. By that stage Sharon was eight.

The house was bought from the Boylan estate, the local landlords, by his parents, John, originally from New Zealand, and his Irish-born mother Ursula.

They moved back in that optimistic decade when many emigrants with families decided it was worth taking a chance on Ireland.

John Horgan bought a turkey farm and the gobbling of turkeys from the nearby sheds were the soundtrack to the childhoods of Shane and his four siblings.

Sharon made a short comedy film, The Week Before Christmas, about the busiest time of the year in the Horgan household.

She remembers: “We watched it grow from the foundations up. My best memory of being there, apart from bringing my first born to visit her grandparents, was driving a mini pedal car up and down the long corridor before the carpets were fitted. Or when I learnt to cycle down the back where the land sloped.”

Shane describes Tara, as the family called it, as a "solidly built family home".

It was of a type built in the 1970s when family sizes were bigger. It has four bedrooms and two bathrooms. There is both a sitting room, a family room and a large kitchen with all the fittings included. There is gas fired central heating. The house has almost 1,700 square feet and is largely open plan.

The 3.5 acre site on which it sits is expansive, with well manicured lawns and a half-acre of garden to the rear with mature shrubs and trees. Any purchaser will not only be buying the house, Shane says, but the fruits of his mother’s labour over four decades.

“My mum has green fingers. This garden has really matured and it adds to the property in a big way.”

The rear garden has a patio area, greenhouse and Argentinian barbecue.

Shane says the family home’s location is its greatest asset and the clue is in the address Hilltown Little, Bellewstown, Co Meath.

The long driveway snakes upwards past one hill and then another. On a clear day it is possible to see across the Irish Sea and towards the Mourne Mountains.

Its location might attract potential Dublin commuters as it is only 42 km from Dublin city centre and just 8km from the M1. It is also within walking distance of Bellewstown village. There is scope, subject to planning permission, for a second dwelling on the property.

Horgan is now in a second career, this time as a trainee lawyer in London. He retired from rugby in 2012 after a glorious career with both Leinster and Ireland, the highlight, among many, perhaps being the try he scored against England at Croke Park in 2007 when he caught the ball like a Meath midfielder and thundered across the English line.

It is a reminder, he says, that he is a Meath-man through and through and had fate ordained otherwise, he could have been a Meath footballer. He grew up with the round ball as much as he did the oval one.

His parents are now downsizing. The house is on sale through local agent Smith Harrington at €459,000.

“Wherever my parents, or I, end up, I’ll always be a Meath man from Bellewstown.”