“There were cattle living in the house when we bought it,” owner Andy Cox says of Weston Lodge, a stone-cut former steward’s house that once belonged to nearby Weston House.

He and his wife bought it in 1992, doubled its size but stayed true to the original proportions.

Their architect, Alain Giacometti, is a relative of Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti.

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Now measuring about 311sq m (3,350sq ft), Weston Lodge is for sale at €990,000 through agents Colliers.

The house feels like a home from the minute you open the front door. A large double-height hall greets you and a 16th century stone fireplace gives the room baronial grandeur.

Upstairs, there’s a galleried landing. Limestone steps lead the eye up the wooden staircase, held in position by an antique Italian stone column, one of the property’s architectural salvage features.

Double doors open into the formal rooms. The first leads into a Georgian red dining room.

Interconnecting doors open into the drawing room, a fine space extending to double-height above another antique stone fireplace. A trio of windows runs along the front wall where the central box bay has a window seat.

Across the hall is the kitchen, a room that is central-casting country-house perfect: wide salvaged floorboards, a navy blue Aga framed with fragments of Portuguese tiles that got damaged in transit and presses made from old window shutters form an L-shape along two walls. The walls are decorated with blue plates bought over the years as job lots at auctions.

The room overlooks the front lawn; part of the property’s 7.5 acres of landscaped gardens. South-facing, in spring it is littered with primroses and has two small ornamental ponds.

A door leads from the front room through to the Prussian-blue sitting room.

Upstairs, the main suite features a lovely bathroom with a cosy nook for the bath, a dressing room big enough to house a single bed and the main bedroom, a lovely room with a dormer ceiling that wasn’t designed with giants in mind – the floor-to-ceiling height is about 7.5ft.

There are two more double bedrooms at the other end of the house.

Dublin Airport is 22 miles away, Ashbourne is 10 miles, and Drogheda is eight miles. The village of Duleek is 2.5 miles from here.