
Glynch House, Newbliss, Co Monaghan €1.15m
When James J Keirans scratched his name into the study window at Glynch House back in 1917, he was old enough to know better. By then the proud son of the well-to-do Keirans family had qualified as a doctor and was 28 years old.
He had given a good example in other ways, though, to his seven siblings, as his younger sister Maggie May had felt encouraged to follow him into a career in medicine. She’s shown in the 1911 census as a medical student at Queen’s.
Later, Dr Keirans would make his mark in another way by joining Eoin O’Duffy’s Irish Brigade in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He died in 1971, but his inscription is still there on the study window.
Other vestiges of the house’s past (it dates from the early 19th century) include stained glass, sash windows and marble fireplaces. But it has been modernised as well, with a reasonably swanky kitchen with granite countertops and a Rangemaster cooker, and en-suites in three of the seven first-floor bedrooms.
The study with the autograph is at the back and has a marble fireplace, while there are two formal reception rooms at the front – drawing room and dining room – one each side of the entrance hall.
The total floor area is 7,800 sq ft including a basement with various store rooms, and there are stone outbuildings in the rear courtyard.
It’s on 81.8 acres and it has been a working farm as well as a guest house. A long avenue lead to the house and a second, back avenue leads out, and there’s a gate lodge at each entrance, one a ruin and one needing refurbishment.
Glynch House, about a kilometre from Newbliss, is for sale for €1.15m with Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes, Farms & Estates (01) 237 6308.