Beechmount House

Beechmount House, famous as a hotel, was erected as a private house in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  The stables bore a plaque with the date 1896. Located on the Trim Road just outside Navan the house was home to the Pentony family before becoming a hotel run by the Walsh family.  Demolished in recent decades the house was erected by John Pentony in Old Balreask townland.

The Pentony family held lands at Kilcarn, Grange and Beechomunt.  John Pentony, widower and farmer of Beechmount, died in 1894 aged 75.  His son, John Steven Pentony, was born in Kilmessan, the son of John Pentony and Rose McKeon in 1861. Rose Pentony died in 1889. John S. Pentony married Julia Flanagan in 1895 at Johnstown and it may have been this marriage that resulted in the construction at Beechmount.  In 1901 John Pentony, his wife, Julia and children, John and Edward were living at Beechmount.  In 1901 the house had 12 out offices had more than seven rooms and 7 windows on the front of the house.  John died before 1910. His widow, Julia Pentony, was living in Bray with her son, Vincent, in 1911.  John C. Pentony held Beechmount House in the 1920s.

William Walsh and family then lived in the house and a ballroom was added.  Lunches and celebrations were held at Beechmount House and it became a hotel.  William was a director of Boyne Mills and served as chairman of Meath County Council.  He had the nickname “The Bard”.  William's wife, Ellen, died in 1948, aged 52.  She had been a member of Cumann na mBan.  The building was re-constructed in the 1950s.  William Walsh died in Dublin in 1988.

Source: meath-roots.com