Old county infirmary building sold

The former county infirmary building in Navan has been sold at auction for €270,000. Raymond Potterton and Company auctioned the property which had an asking price of €950,000 when it first went on the market in February 2011. The property comprises the landmark building standing on an elevated 0.7 acre site with commanding views over the town and River Boyne. Following the building of a new community nursing facility on the Athboy Road close to Navan Hospital, the Health Service Executive put the former respite care building up for sale. The building will have memories for those who were married at a time when the registry of births, marriages and deaths was based there, and civil marriage ceremonies took place there. The county infirmary was opened in 1754. Early in 1753, the gentlemen in the neighbourhood of Navan, from their observance of the calamities and miseries of the poor, proposed to build a county hospital. A subscription was opened at an assembly in Navan in October 1753 and some time afterwards the foundation stone of the infirmary was laid. In 1866, a further reconstruction was carried out. A medical notebook from the early part of the 19th century survives and is in the Meath County Library local history department. The building comprises a detached seven bay three-storey building. Construction would appear to be of mass concrete and stone under a pitched slate roof. There have been additions to the original building comprising of a range of two storey buildings with pitched roofs and single storey flat roof extensions. There are a number of cut stone buildings to the rear of the main complex. In use as the county infirmary up to late 2010, the property is currently laid out for use as a nursing home facility with ancillary accommodation such as fitted kitchens and dayrooms. The property has potential for a wide variety of uses including medical, office, residential, commercial subject to the relevant planning consent. The ground floor measures 510 square metres /5,500 square feet; first floor of 280 square metres/3000 square feet; and second floor of 140 square metres/1,500 square feet. The property has extensive frontage and pedestrian access via the main gate on Bridge Street with vehicular access off the Fair Green leading to a large car parking area. The entire site is zoned 'B1' in the current Navan Development Plan for town centre uses 'to protect and enhance the special physical and social character of existing town and village centres and to provide for new and improved town centre facilities and uses'. The Village Store residence and shop in Kildalkey sold for €250,000.