A lavishly renovated five-bedroom house built in the 18th century is on the market for €3.2m, writes Willie Clingan.
Built as a hunting lodge by Lord Palmerston around 250 years ago, Barmeen on Dartry Road in south Dublin will be marketed by Sherry FitzGerald as "a country house in the city".
The price, however, will reflect the city more than the country - the opening guide price is €3.2 million, and guide prices are so frequently exceeded that it will be no surprise if the auctioneer is chasing more on the day. Auction date is June 30th.
For a five-bedroom family house with no apparent development potential, it is a substantial price driven up by two factors - the leafy and expensive location opposite Milltown Golf Club, and the individuality of the house.
This will be only the fourth time it has been sold in the last 150 years. The current owners bought it 30 years ago from the famous Haslam sisters, "Pink" and "Blue", two identical twins who ran cordon bleu cookery classes in the house for many years with the help of a French chef.
They also took in students, including the young Yul Brynner. They went off to work for a British aristocrat in the north of England one winter to raise the money to fix the roof.
Structurally, the house was in good order when they sold it; "there's not a damp spot", say the current owners. Even so, it needed a good deal of decorative upgrading when they arrived. But the new lady of the house was an interior designer and it has received lavish attention since.
The style is comfortable country house: rich burgundy colour schemes, elegant reception rooms, spacious bedrooms, tall Georgian windows, internal arches and well-maintained period detail.
Outside, the garden wraps around the house, with a choice of nooks and crannies to sit in, including under a magnificent wisteria tree behind the house.
The house is well set back from the road, with room for several cars in the gravelled driveway to the front.
The lawn to the side of the house is heavily screened from the road by deep planting of trees and bushes; there is a variety of small, almost secret, garden spaces behind the house.
With four main reception rooms and five bedrooms, it's a practical family house and "every room in it is used", the owners say.
The front door opens into a tiled hallway with a wide archway opening to the left into a splendid inner hallway, complete with period fireplace. There is a comfortable sittingroom on the other side of the hallway.
To the back of the house there are the more formal reception rooms - a particularly fine drawingroom with an unusual pine and plasterwork fireplace, and a connecting diningroom.
The drawingroom has a door on to the back garden. Also on the ground floor, there is a homely kitchen with an Aga and some ancillary rooms. Two of the bedrooms upstairs have full en suite bathrooms. The bedrooms continue the country house feel, with their comfortable, traditional style. New owners, inevitably, want to make changes, even to houses in good order. Here, they may want to upgrade and extend the kitchen - the owners had plans drawn up some time ago and obtained planning permission for a box-bay extension - and may also want to modernise the bathrooms.
But a more peaceful millionaire able to afford Barmeen may just settle down under the wisteria and enjoy his or her new home.
