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Amazing 5m Euro Knockdrin Castle For Sale In Mullingar, Ireland

This XVIII Century Gothic Revival Castle for sale is everything you'd imagine a castle to be located on 500 Acres (with 500 additional acres available), located in Mullingar, Ireland. This splendid eighteenth-century Gothic Revival Castle is majestically positioned within a rolling parkland estate of 500 acres (with 500 additional acres available). The Knockdrin Castle is one of the finest picturesque castellated country houses built in Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century. The castle was built by Sir Richard Levinge (1785-1848), who first commissioned Sir Richard Morrison to design a new Gothic Revival-style castle residence circa 1810.

However, neither of Morrison’s two designs were built and the built design is attributed to James Shiel, assistant to Francis Johnston, one of Ireland’s best-known architects, and a noted exponent of this type of architectural design. Elements of the front facade of the castle appear to have been influenced by the Morrison designs. The castle is noteworthy as one of the leading examples of the transition from Classicism to Gothic when the latter was still a style and not yet an ideology and the former classical principles were very much survive beneath a veneer of ornamentation. Knockdrin Castle’s late-medieval trappings are lightly worn and the castle is, in essence, a classical Georgian country house in a Gothic dress. The castle has none of the heaviness that is customarily associated with the Gothic Revival Movement and benefits from large windows, the principal reception rooms facing south, making the accommodation elegant and bright.

A striking feature at the Knockdrin Castle is the top-lit staircase made of carved oak, like the doors throughout the castle. There is an abundance of natural light that is provided by a central glazed dome. The first-floor has an elaborate gallery that is decorated with fluted shafts and a sequence of ogee-headed niches around the walls. The reception rooms on the ground floor include a drawing room, reception hall, dining room, ballroom, and library. The accommodation within the castle extends to some 19,375 square feet and provides 7 principal bedrooms for a total of 12, including the Crown Bedroom where British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill stayed during the War of Independence (his parents being regular hunting visitors to the estate). There are 4 estate lodges complete the accommodation.

The castle is surrounded by picturesque scenery with attractive undulating topography throughout the estate, which includes belts of highly productive arable lands along with commercial woodland and a small lake, Lough Drin. The core estate demesne which extends to over 1,000 acres is intact with 500 acres offered in this lot and an additional 500 available by negotiation, relatively unique in an Irish context, with the castle privately and centrally positioned within the lands and enjoying uninterrupted views over estate lands to the distant hills beyond.

Knockdrin Castle is only about an hour's drive from Dublin City Centre and Dublin Airport. The M4 motorway is easily accessible, and the large town of Mullingar is about a 10-minute drive away. The smaller towns of Castlepollard and Cloughan are about a 15 and an 8-minute drive away.