A stately home once owned by English philosopher Bertrand Russell near Navan, Co Meath, is on the market after being in the same family for close to 100 years.
Ardsallagh House, a 1,110sq m (11,948sq ft) Tudor revival house, was built in 1844 by the 7th Duke of Bedford for his son, Lord John Russell, twice prime minister of England. Bertrand, the prominent philosopher, Lord John’s grandson, was the last of the Russell family to own Ardsallagh, although it seems he never lived or even visited there. He sold it under 1903 legislation which enabled Irish tenants to buy holdings from their landlords.
Owners after that included nationalist MP James McCann – who briefly published a newspaper, The Irish Peasant, in Navan – but Ardsallagh was bought in the 1930s by local builder Cormac Murray and his wife Catherine, who raised five children there. Cormac died in 1975 and Catherine in 1983. Their eldest daughter, Bernadette, continued to live in the house until 2022, and died aged 90 in 2024.
The house, with its Tudor-style steeply pitched gables and tall chimneys on almost 200 acres by the banks of the river Boyne, is now for sale through Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes and Sherry FitzGerald Reilly, seeking €3.5 million. The property needs complete refurbishment and “will take millions” to restore, according to its executor, a woman who is the eldest of Cormac and Catherine’s 14 grandchildren, who all inherit the property.
