In 1950 property entrepreneur Brigid Kelly bought Gorse Hill House, an imposing Victorian building off Knocknacree Road in Dalkey, Co Dublin, on an elevated site overlooking Killiney Bay.
Kelly, who started out as a woman of modest means, managed to build up a portfolio of eight properties around Dublin. She saw property as a way of providing security for her family and to supplement the income of her husband John, a self-employed painter and decorator.
“She was the brains behind the operation,” says her grand-daughter Philippa, who has lived at Gorse Hill House with her husband John and family for over 30 years. “She was so full of life and was, in many ways, ahead of her time .”
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Kelly bought Gorse Hill House as a family home because she wanted to move out of Ranelagh to the open space of “the country”.
The house is on half an acre of sloping gardens and is right beside 10 acres of common land – there’s a right of way to the common land, known as Gorse Hill, to the side of the property. The family have decided it’s time to sell up and the property is on the market through joint agents Ganly Walters and DNG who are seeking €1.9 million.
The house is at the end of a long drive and it’s not surprising that most people use the former servant’s entrance at garden level rather than negotiate the long flight of granite steps up to the main entrance.
The first occupant of Gorse Hill House , or Milleen as it was known then, was Wensley Bond Jennings, who lived there from in 1879 until 1890. From the intricate plasterwork in the main reception rooms and the entrance hall, it appears that he liked the finer things in life.
Over the sea to Howth
The sea view across to Howth is one of the outstanding features of both the drawingroom and the diningroom. The drawingroom is dual aspect, including a bay of sash windows at one end, and the effect of the double whammy of sea views is mesmerising. Like many rooms in the house, it needs updating but has a ceiling that is covered in beautifully ornate plasterwork and which, at some stage, was painted green, white and yellow to highlight the detail.
No two fireplaces in this house are the same and all are believed to be original. While the fireplace in the drawingroom is a flecked brown marble, the one in the diningroom is snowy white marble with inset tiles depicting birds. The detail on the equally ornate ceiling in the diningroom is painted in a yellowish-cream .
Two big double bedrooms at this level need updating. At the far end of the entrance hall a wooden door with eye-catching panels of red-stained glass was once the door to a conservatory that linked the house to the upper part of the rear garden, but which was knocked some years ago when it fell into disrepair.
On the first floor return there’s a family bathroom with a shower, and a very small bedroom that is used for storage.
At garden level, the rooms are less grand, the kitchen is a homely space with a black cast-iron stove set in an old fireplace. There’s another sitting room at this level and three more bedrooms, including a large double bedroom with a wall of dated green wardrobes. There’s also another family bathroom in need of work.
The front garden flanks the driveway and is a mix of lawn, mature trees and pockets of shrubbery. The rear garden is set on several levels, with a courtyard at garden level that has a water tank that takes rain water from the hill.
There have been a few gorse fires in the common land in the 30 years the current owners have lived here and firemen have used the water from the tank to help extinguish the fire.
Steps lead up from the courtyard to a lawn. At the highest level of the garden there’s thick undergrowth with the odd lurking fox, some fruit trees and a Victorian tiled floor of a former summerhouse.
The big stone garage to the side of the use was used as a workshop and there’s a forecourt, used for parking, in front of it.
