This riverside property was once home to Ireland’s first cardinal and the Pope’s recruitment sergeant

Price: €850,000

Agents: Savills (01) 618300 / REA Potterton (046) 943 1391

The Pope ruled his own nation state for a thousand years and at the very end, as it unravelled, a thousand Irish recruits raised by the archbishop of Dublin were rushed to Italy to defend it.

From the 700s until 1860, the nation that was the Papal States covered an area half the size of Ireland with a population of over three million. That territory covered Rome, Romagna, Marche, Umbria, Marittima E Compagna and until 1791, Avignon in France.

But as the Italian Unification movement gathered ground in 1859 under Garibaldi, the pro-unification state of Piedmont Sardinia threatened to invade the Pope’s turf from the north. In stepped the formidable Archbishop of Dublin and top Vatican diplomat Paul Cullen, who would later become Ireland’s first-ever cardinal.

Cullen adapted to the role of recruitment sergeant and feverishly began mustering a volunteer force from Ireland to beef up the Pope’s tiny army, in the hope of providing a semblance of defence.

Around 1,300 Irish men answered the call alongside volunteers from many other countries but the numbers lining up alongside the famed Swiss Guards were piffling compared with the forces arrayed against them, including those of Piedmont Sardinia, recently battle-hardened in the Crimean War.

A few hundred Irishmen left on reaching Rome after encountering ramshackle organisation and being given surplus Austrian uniforms instead of the new Irish green kits they were promised. But when Piedmont invaded, its troops got more of a fight than they had reckoned on.

The 1,000 Irish in particular, under Major Myles O’Reilly’s St Patrick’s Battalion got properly stuck in. They were sent to defend Perugia, Spoleto, Ancona and Castelfidardo. Hopelessly outnumbered, they were pushed back, despite putting in a good account of themselves.

Captured, the survivors were rounded up and transported via Genoa to Cork where they received a hero’s welcome. The Papal States were reduced to the province of Lazio and later in 1870, squeezed back to the tiny Vatican City boundaries we know today.

Cardinal Cullen was regarded as being a capable, shrewd but aloof individual with a particular devotion to education and dogma. Born in Kildare to a prosperous tenant farming family, he was educated by the Quakers and at 17, went to study in Rome where he became a leading scholar and diplomat. He was ordained there in 1829.

Remaining in Rome over many years and quickly grasping the Italian language, he became a powerful and invaluable go-between for the Pope in the affairs of the English-speaking world in particular.

Though forgotten by history, Cullen is often cited as being the third most powerful Irishman of the 19th century after Daniel O’Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell. Rapidly anti-British but also equally ferociously anti-Fenian, he favoured a constitutional route to independence.

In the 1850s he established the Catholic University of Ireland, which would ultimately become UCD. In 1866, the Pope repaid Cullen for his loyalty and made him the very first Irish cardinal.

Cullen was also noted for his large contribution to the Vatican’s definition of papal infallibility when it was debated within the First Vatican Council in 1870.

Between the parties who argued that the Pope was utterly infallible and those against, Cullen managed to secure the middle present ground: that the Pope is (mostly) infallible.

He was born near Athy in 1803, his father Hugh and uncle Paul had both been United Irishmen. His uncle Paul, after whom he was named, was executed by the British in 1798 and his own father narrowly avoided a death sentence.

As the penal laws were repealed, the family began to buy farmland and in 1841, purchased Liscarton House in Navan, Co Meath, on the banks of the Blackwater, along with some surrounding land.

Around this time, Paul Cullen had secured the paid position of head of the Irish College in Rome, and it is possible that he contributed to the family’s purchase.

The 1820’s three-storey Georgian house had been attached to neighbouring Liscarton Castle, perhaps built at a dower. At this point, it would have had a working corn mill attached, along with lime kilns. Cullen died in Dublin 12 years later and is buried in Clonliffe.

The McKnight family owned Liscarton House when they bred the winner of the 1972 Irish Grand National. Dim Wit was trained by the great Paddy Mullins, father of Willie, Tom and Tony. Dim Wit was jockeyed by Matt Curran on the big day.

In 2006, the property was bought by Neal Sweeney, an Athboy-born businessman who had previously been living in Clonee. “I was looking for a life in the country.

It came up for sale and I was lucky to buy it on my birthday, the 23rd of October in that year. It was in fair condition but dated. Structurally, it was mostly good but the roof needed some work.”

An engineer by trade, Sweeney got going on the restoration himself. “It needed some slates, battens and laths replaced. But it’s all handcrafted cut trusses and supports in solid oak, with not a nail anywhere. Inside, I installed a few wood stoves and then got the painters in.”

And with his installation of two large, authentic Waterford Crystal chandeliers bought from the previous owners, Sweeney experienced his own version of a famous Only Fools and Horses episode.

“When I got upstairs to the supporting beam, I pulled the chandelier up through the hole from below and thought it felt extraordinarily heavy. I bolted it into place.

“When I went back downstairs I found I had hooked the folding ladder with the chandelier and now the ladder was hanging up in the air. It was so well attached that I had to go back up, unscrew the nut and let it down again to get it unattached. And then go back up and attach the chandelier again,” he says.

Locals enthralled him with tales of a more explosive mishap at the property in the 1960s. “The mill hadn’t been in use for a hundred years, so for some reason, they decided to blow it up. Gelignite was legal back then.

“Unfortunately, after packing the mill with explosives inside, they had it sealed up. There were air pockets trapped inside and they had failed to ensure the explosion had exit channels.

“So when they set it off, the blast was so powerful that it blew the whole roof off the outbuilding block nearby. To this day, it has a zinc roof rather than tiles.”

Sweeney describes his 18 years in residence as “a ball” but now he has his eye on a smaller project in Athboy, his home town, and has placed Liscarton on the market.

The house he is putting up for sale is a good example of a period Georgian, with most of its integrity intact. Just as when he bought it in 2006, it would suit someone looking for a life in the country but not too far from the city.

Liscarton House, on five and a half acres, is within a five minute drive of Navan town, 15 minutes from Kells and about 20 minutes from Slane. Dublin city centre is 33 miles away.

Accommodation includes an entrance hall, a drawing room, a living room, a kitchen and a dining room which comes with an oil-fired Aga and a utility room located off it. On this floor, there is also a sunroom and a guest WC.

On the first floor, the master bedroom has its own ensuite as well as a walk-in wardrobe. There are three more double bedrooms as well as the family bathroom, which comes with a classic stand-alone cast iron tub.

There’s quite a bit of potential in the stone outbuildings. These include nine stables, a tack room, a feed room, a boiler house and various stores.

There’s also direct river access to the Blackwater. The two largest chandeliers which Neal Sweeney bought from the previous owners are available for sale separately.

Liscarton House is being sold by joint agents Savills and REA Potterton, with offers sought in the region of €850,000.