A fully restored Georgian Dublin townhouse is an unusual find and one that also has its original mews (now converted) is even rarer still. Number 25 Fitzwilliam Street Upper, in the heart of Dublin’s Georgian district, has been a family home since it was built in 1820.
It last changed hands in 2002 (for €2.5 million at auction) when it was an executor’s sale prompted by the death of Alice Murnaghan. She lived until she was 103, her husband the well-known art collector and supreme court judge James Murnaghan having predeceased her some years before.
The house needed work when its present owner bought it and he commissioned heritage architect John McCarthy.
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As well as the nice parts of restoration – such as commissioning handpainted wallpaper from David Skinner for the drawing rooms and sourcing vintage sanitaryware from France – the house also needed less glamorous work, but equally sensitive in heritage terms, such as rebuilding and reroofing the severely water-damaged return and digging deep underneath the basement to tank it and solve a damp problem.
€1 million spent
The owner says he spent €1 million on the work, which included turning the original two storey stone coach house at the rear, which opens onto Lad Lane, into a very pretty three-bedroom 128 sq m (1,375 sq ft) mews, with bedrooms downstairs and open plan living and kitchen upstairs.
The 480 sq m (5,164 sq ft) main house now presents interesting opportunities for new owners. There's rental potential from the mews and also from the two-bedroom apartment in the basement, which has its own entrance to the front and a small patio area at the back. The sheer size of the house allows for a gracious layout that would be familiar to its original owner, Richard Williamson, owner of the Dublin Evening Post.
There are four vast reception rooms, two at hall level and two on the first floor. They have those perfect Georgian proportions, beautiful period details including fine fireplaces, wide plank floorboards and decorative plaster work.
The three bedrooms are on the second and third floors. The largest runs the width of the front of the house on the second floor and the room at the back, which would also have been a bedroom, has been turned into an enormous bathroom furnished with reclaimed sanitary ware including a freestanding bath and, an unusual find, a Victorian chrome freestanding shower.
The two other bedrooms at the top of the house have full-sized bathroom en-suites.
The roomy eat-in kitchen is in the hall floor return – it would originally have been a butler’s pantry – and above that on the first floor return is the study.
Meticulous work
The owner took on the restoration out of a passion for Georgian architecture, art and heritage buildings and the work is considered and meticulous. He is now downsizing.
The vast majority of these Georgian houses have long been converted into offices but when seen laid out and decorated the way this one is, their appeal as luxury family homes is obvious.
Sherry FitzGerald is selling 25 Fitzwilliam Street Upper for €3.1 million. It has just sold a Georgian house needing refurbishment nearby on Herbert Street to a family moving into town from the suburbs. This could very well go the same way.
