Howth bungalow with two helipads and a swimming pool

To find one helipad in the garden of a suburban Dublin house is unusual but two seems, well, downright extraordinary.

The owner of Pine Lodge on Howth Hill, just beyond the Summit, explains it all quite reasonably. He works in aviation and pilots his own helicopter and so when he built Pine Lodge on Carrickbrack Road 20 years ago, he built a helipad, carefully situated on the 1.78 acres so that it is protected from the wind that whips around the hill. And to accommodate his friends and their helicopters when they dropped by, he built a second helipad in the garden.

Whether they prove selling points for the vast 687sq m/7,392 sq ft bungalow remains to be seen although apparently planners in Dublin became so fed up during the Celtic Tiger years with planning applications for helipads that they clamped down on the whole thing, so that it’s now very difficult to get.

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Swimming pool

The family house, which also has a swimming pool, is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for €3.5million.

When the owners bought Pine Lodge, it was already partially built. They enlarged on the plans over the years so that now the red brick single storey house is U-shaped around a flagstone courtyard. The large swimming pool comprises one section and on the opposite side of the courtyard is the guest accommodation made up of two separate rooms, with their own bathrooms and one with a kitchen. One of these separate units has been used as nanny accommodation, the other as a home office.

The main part of the house has a large kitchen and a family room at one end – with panoramic sea views – and a vast living room that is almost the size of a small function room at the other end. In between are the four bedrooms, two very large with full size bathrooms, and two small bedrooms and a family bathroom. The house is high on the hill, with lovely views from most windows.

It is not unlikely that new owners will remodel Pine Lodge to make its appearance more contemporary, and unless they need such a big living room, reconfigure the internal accommodation. Or they may, if they have seriously deep pockets, be so attracted to the spectacular site with its privacy and lovely views, that they buy it for that and look to demolish the house and start over.

The owners have young children and hope to move to a slightly smaller house in the area that is closer to amenities than this section of Howth Hill.