Imposing home for €1.9m

MonkstownSloperton Lodge is a fine, imposing detached house just opposite De Vesci Park and tennis club in Monkstown. Set for auction through HOK Residential on October 1st, the guide price is €1.9 million.

The house is in three units - a basement apartment, another self-contained unit that takes up the two storey back return and the main house. If it were brought back to single family use it would have around 557 sq m (6,000 sq ft). However, buyers who intend to do this, will have to budget for extensive refurbishment.

The present owners bought in 1990 and the main part of the house had for the previous two decades been rented out to American Embassy staff.

It has five bedrooms, two reception rooms and, given the size of the house, a particularly small kitchen. Sloperton was built in 1835 at the tail end of the Regency period and its porch and entrance hall are of gracious proportions. To the left is a formal livingroom with dual aspect from the tall sash window to the front and the deep to the side. As in the rest of the main house this room has its original decorative cornice work and, while the fireplaces are gone, else where it has a fine white marble one.

Also on this side of the house is another smaller reception room and opening directly off it is a home office. As this is a double fronted house to the right off the hall there should be a door opening into a third reception room, but sometime in the past this room was converted into a nanny flat complete with mezzanine sleeping area and a kitchenette. Access to it is at the back of the house beside the kitchen.

As the American tenants presumably ate out all the time the kitchen is very small with a dining table in the hallway outside it. It is highly likely that new owners will either go down into the basement to create a large family kitchen or, if they are keeping that as a rental unit, put a kitchen to the front of the house into the nanny's room or the back reception.

Up a rather grand flight of stairs there is a bathroom in the half return and at top of the house five double bedrooms and a shower room. On the half return there is a tall arched window. The utility room is at this level although the new owners may turn it into a good family bathroom.

The basement apartment, which was totally refurbished in the mid-1990s, has two bathrooms, a big kitchen and a livingroom. It opens out to its own patio area at the side.

Access to this unit is at the side of the house along side the access to the two-storey return that is also a separate rental. This has two bedrooms, a bathroom, shower room as well as a livingroom and kitchen and in effect it feels like a separate house. It does not appear to be in as good condition as the basement.