Last of the great sites on Shrewsbury Road for €10.5m

[ Jump to the latest house for sale: Fintragh, 11 Shrewsbury Road ]

For one small road of just 30 houses, Shrewsbury Road in the heart of Dublin 4 punches well above its weight. After all, what is a residential road apart from bricks, mortar and a place to park your car? But nothing sets hearts racing quite like the comings and goings on Shrewsbury.

The small, tree-lined artery in Dublin’s embassy belt connecting Ailesbury Road to Merrion Road has long held a cachet as home to the capital’s elite professional classes where prominent medical, legal and retail families lived and played alongside their ambassadorial neighbours. Properties seldom changed hands and generally did so in private sales.

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Shrewsbury Road from above: numbers 9 and 11. Number 9, Lissadell, is extending to 1,069sq m (11,506sq ft). Number 11, Fintragh, at 530sq m (5,700sq ft) is next door

Then in the early 1990s the road became a bellwether for the rising fortunes of the economy. The clans grew up and gave way to the tide of developers and financiers of the ensuing boom, including Derek Quinlan, Denis O'Brien, Paul Coulson, Seán Dunne, Larry O'Mahoney and Niall O'Farrell.

More than half of the properties on the road have changed hands in the last 25 years, and during the late 1990s and early noughties new residents embarked on extraordinary refurbishments, often meeting with considerable and vociferous resistance from a small but significant cohort of long-term residents well versed in the planning laws and keen to retain the original integrity of the leafy road.

Following the collapse of the economy 14 of the road’s homes changed hands in the last three years alone. Thirteen of these properties sold for a combined total of about €65 million.

Compare this to the price of €58 million paid by developer Seán Dunne for a single property, Walford, at number 24, in 2005. The same property – on 1½ acres – bucked the trend in the recent distressed property clearout on Shrewsbury when it netted €14 million after its sale in 2013 to a company understood to have links to Dunne's millionaire wife, Gayle Killalea.

Now a new phase is under way on the road as the latest tranche of settlers bed in and make these homes their own. And going by the daily army of commercial vans and construction machinery descending on the road, it’s business as usual as the latest generation of dramatic luxury refurbishments takes shape.

Expansion

O'Brien's Belmont, number 21, is almost completely obscured behind hoarding as the original 546sq m (5,877sq ft) house is being extended to a total of 964sq m (10,183sq ft).

At number nine, Lissadell, new owner Francesca McWilliams is engaged in an even more ambitious expansion of the original 408sq m (4,392sq ft) property to 1,069sq m (11,506sq ft). The scale of the build, for a residential property, is jaw-dropping and will include a basement with swimming pool, staff accommodation, a kitchen and a wine cellar.

Meanwhile, the former Belgian embassy, Shrewsbury House, on the corner with Merrion Road, which was bought by Owen Killian of Aryzta last year for €6.5 million, is undergoing an extensive refurb that will see the original 604sq m (6,500 sq ft) property almost triple in size to 1,670sq m (18,000 sq ft), making it one of the largest private residences in the capital. The plans include a two-level basement, with a lift to transport cars below surface. It will also include a swimming pool, gym and a 91sq m (982sq ft) log store.

Elsewhere, Seamus Fitzpatrick, of specialist construction firm CapVest, has recently completed a stunning transformation of number 18, Woodside, the former headquarters of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland which he bought in 2012 for €8 million and has now converted into a megahome.

The mystery owner of Walford, Yesreb Holdings, secured permission last year to almost double its size from 546sq m (5,877sq ft) to 964sq m (10,376sq ft), and that work has yet to begin.

It’s also likely the ultimate buyer of Fintragh, at number 11 Shrewsbury Road, which comes on the market today asking €10.5 million through Knight Frank, will want to upgrade that property.

After all, if the work currently under way on the road is anything to go by, the refurb bar on Shrewsbury has been seriously raised.

Fintragh, 11 Shrewsbury Road

Description: a substantial eight-bed on 0.7 of an acre asking €10.5 million

Agent: Knight Frank

The arrival on the market today of Fintragh, 11 Shrewsbury Road, marks one of the few non-distressed sales on Shrewsbury Road in recent years. A substantial redbrick of 530sq m (5,700sq ft), it is located on what might be considered the “right side” of the road – that is, south-facing on to Wanderers Rugby Club and away from the Simmonscourt grounds on the other side. This orientation, and its site of 0.7 of an acre including an outdoor swimming pool and tennis court, explains the asking price of €10.5 million, says selling agent Rena O’Kelly of Knight Frank.

Fintragh is owned by Pennyvale Property, a property investment vehicle for the Assaf family, who bought number 11 in 1987. They lived there for a period but for the past decade the property has been rented, most recently to a family with five very young children. It’s fitting really, because prior to its sale to the Assafs, Fintragh was owned for many years by the Kidneys, a prominent medical family with 12 children. They were the first on the road to have a heated outdoor swimming pool and Fintragh hosted many neighbouring kids for years.

Today the swimming pool has seen better days, and the tennis court and grounds are ripe for a rethink. About five years ago Pennyvale tried to secure planning permission for embassy use for Fintragh but was refused on the grounds that it was an unsuitable development in a conservation area. One of the more strident objections came from then owner of number nine next door, solicitor Anne Neary. It’s ironic now that number nine is undergoing a transformation of gargantuan proportions, complete with copper domes, that dwarfs Fintragh. (See aerial pic, left)

The house dates from about 1900 and bears many late-Victorian and Edwardian features including stained leaded glass on doorways, ornate plasterwork, brass fingerplates on panelled mahogany doors.

It has been well maintained through the years, with beautiful darkwood flooring and tall sash windows including an arched box bay window in the interconnecting dining/ drawingroom. A couple of ill-advised extensions were bolted on in latter years and these, along with the tiny kitchen off the main livingroom, will be reconsidered by any buyer. It’s likely the rear of the property will be reworked for a kitchen conservatory that could flood the lovely south-facing light into the house.

Upstairs the bedroom layout is generous with seven good-sized bedrooms arranged over the upper landing and first floor. Given the scale of other recent refurbishments already permitted on the road, Fintragh may have embassy potential, and the Chinese have been looking in the area for a number of years.

But with so many houses having changed hands on Shrewsbury lately, it will also appeal as one of the last substantial residential properties available to buy for family use. Hopefully it will retain all of its charm as a lovely family home in spite of any inevitable structural transformation.