Inside Tipperary’s 18th century 10-bedroom Sopwell Hall Estate, currently on the market for €8.5 million

The drawing room and dining room are each impressive and, again, accessed from the central main hall. Displaying the very best features and proportions of fine Georgian architecture each is filled with natural light, has impressive large marble chimneypieces with open fires and ornate cornicing.

The stair hall incorporates a fine 18th-century carved timber staircase lit from a large Venetian window on the stair return and from the large top-lit domed landing above. Concealed doors lead to a guest WC and a roof terrace. A secondary stair hall accesses the floor below and the upper floors. A small kitchen on this level serves the dining room. A feature of the main reception rooms and, indeed, the entire house is the abundance of natural light with ample tall and large glazed windows.

The broad carved staircase, complete with original handrail and spindles, leads to a generously large landing on the first floor. Impressive architecturally, there are six matching scagliola sienna marble columns and a large, perfectly proportioned domed ceiling, with a glazed atrium at the apex, which is surrounded by fine plasterwork. There are five principal bedrooms and four bathrooms on this floor.

The master bedroom suite occupies the south-eastern corner. The bedroom enjoys a dual aspect and has a marble chimneypiece with an open fire and interconnecting doors to an en-suite bathroom and to the second bedroom, which could be used as a dressing room and links to its own bathroom. The bathroom, off the master bedroom, is charming with the design inspired by a bathroom in the Chateau de Rambouillet in France.

The third bedroom has a dual aspect with fine parkland views towards Knockshegowna Hill (Cnoc Sí Uwa, which translates as ‘Hill of Fairy Una’) and an interconnecting door to the fourth bedroom, which in turn connects to an en-suite bathroom. These rooms combined could make a large suite with a bedroom, dressing room and bathroom.

The fifth bedroom retains the original 1745 oak panelling and has an interconnecting door to a shared bathroom with the fourth bedroom and/or can utilise a family bathroom across the hall.

A laundry room with linen shelving is positioned off a secondary stair hall, which accesses the second floor and floors below. The second floor provides five further bedrooms and a bathroom and has a games room, study, large store and access to the roof.

The Castle

The Castle, called Killaleigh Castle, is long unoccupied but largely intact. Built, circa 1590, by the Gaelic MacEgan Clan as a fortified Castle or Tower House under an Elizabethan grant until 1662, when the Clan’s lands were forfeit. Killaleigh Castle with its immediate lands and over 1,000 acres coming into the possession of Col. Thomas Sadlier, Adjutant General to Henry Cromwell, for his military achievements. Through buying up debentures on lands awarded to fellow officers who wished to return to England he had an accumulated estate of over 5,000 acres by the end of the 17th-century.

The castle was in a ruinous state and Col. Sadlier rebuilt it and doubled it in size, adding a second overlapping rectangular section in the mid-17th-century and, presumably, the unusually tall chimneys. It is a fine example of the transition from basic fortified castles to more comfortable castles or houses, albeit still with fortification as evident from the mâchicoulis.

In 1745 a Francis Sadlier, grandson of Col. Thomas Sadlier, built the imposing Sopwell Hall to become the principal and statement house on the estate, with the castle then uninhabited. The Sopwell Estate ownership passed to the Trench family in 1797 through the marriage of his daughter, Mary. The Trench family remained in ownership until 1985, when the current owners purchased Sopwell.

Whilst in need of complete restoration the castle appears to be largely structurally sound and comprising some 3,976 square feet or 369 square metres could provide useful additional amenity, were it required and subject to any necessary consents. It stands within a walled enclosure that also contains the Bailiff’s House and a long range of single storey outbuildings.

The Bailiff’s House comprises some 1,480 square feet or 137.5 square metres of potential accommodation. The outbuildings extend to some 5,812 square feet or 540 square metres of net internal space. Killaleigh Castle and the Bailiff’s House are positioned a short distance from Sopwell Hall and can be accessed from an internal roadway or independently from the rear or castle entrance.

Tipperary’s Sopwell Hall Estate is currently on the market for €8,500,000 via Callum Bain of Colliers.