£525,000-plus for seven-bed at the gates of Beauparc

One of Co Meath's stock of small period houses, the Old Rectory at Beauparc, is expected to make in excess of £525,000 when it is auctioned on October 26th by Ganly Walters.

The seven-bedroom house has been refurbished twice in the past seven years and has been brought to the market in particularly good condition. As the name suggests, the Old Rectory was precisely that - a three-storey house built 200 years ago by the Church of Ireland beside the local church and railway station. The church has since been demolished and the station has been closed for decades.

Beauparc is little more than a hamlet, about two miles off the Dublin-Slane road. The village has neither a pub, school nor church, just a handful of houses, many of of them clustered at the entrance to Beauparc Estate, which was inherited by Lord Mountcharles. The Old Rectory was extensively remodelled and upgraded in 1992 by the late Liz Bourke, a leading bloodstock breeder, when she moved there after selling Stackallen House. She managed to recapture much of the old charm of the house, and after her death, the house was sold at auction in 1997 for £355,000.

The current owners also poured money into the house, and reorganised some of the reception rooms, converting one into a formal diningroom. It now has three reception rooms off the good-sized entrance hall.

Although the house is arranged on three levels, it is a perfectly manageable size. Its accommodation includes four bedrooms, two bathrooms on the top floor, and a kitchen/ diningroom, along with three bedrooms at garden level.

It is an ideal house for entertaining, it has a particularly handsome drawingroom with high windows overlooking the front and rear gardens, and an attractive white marble fireplace with a Georgian grate.

The kitchen/diningroom opens on to a sun-trap patio at the back of the house, which is surrounded by a rose garden. The open-plan kitchen is kept cosy by an Aga.

The Old Rectory stands on 3.5 acres which include a fine paddock at the front and another one at the rear. There are also two loose boxes in the grounds and a staff house. The property will obviously have special appeal to families involved in equestrian sports. Three hunts, the Meath, the Tara and the Ward Union, all meet in the parish.