Fancy having your own chapel? You can, along with 150m of prime River Liffey frontage in Newbridge, Co Kildare, in a former religious order residence.
The property in question belongs to the Patrician Brothers and has been their residence since the approximately 650sq m (7,000sq ft) brick-fronted structure was built in 1963.
Set more than 130m back from the busy road just before the bridge into the town, the residence is set on almost 1.1 hectares (2.7 acres). It faces the waterway’s west bank and its linear park, where you have swans and all manner of wildlife to watch, once you clear some of the mature evergreen trees that surround the property.
Appropriately named Liffey Lodge, the house has 3.4m ceiling heights at entrance level and large windows giving the rooms Georgian-like proportions. Currently the windows are all uPVC.
As well as an impressive entrance hall, where there is a well-maintained oak parquet floor, a religious order favourite aeons before it was fashionable, there are several dual-aspect rooms. The most impressive is the refectory, which overlooks the southeast facing lawns to the rear, where there are glasshouses and frontage on to Chapel Lane. The kitchen also has windows on two sides as does the library, which spans the depth of the house and has an off-centre fireplace surrounded by a slab of Connemara marble.
The property also comes with a gorgeous modernist style chapel lit by stained-glass windows on its three exterior sides. It has a small brass tabernacle and there is another in the adjoining sacristy, where large open drawers were specially designed for vestments.
Across from the refectory is the kitchen and at the end of the house a staircase leading to just one bedroom and adjoining bathroom. The rest of its 12 bedrooms, the same number as the apostles, are accessed via a sweeping staircase with a wrought iron balustrade, the chairlift currently installed detracting from its look somewhat.
The bedrooms are more monastic in size than the ground floor rooms. The modest accommodation averages about 10.5sq m in size per room and these share a laundry room and a set of shower stalls and toilets.
The floors and walls throughout are all solid concrete, so you’ll need to take a Kango hammer to them should you wish to make them bigger, or install en suite bathrooms.
The river frontage isn’t really accessible at present, as a line of mature trees and overgrowth fill the boundary line. The right landscaping and the possible addition of a boardwalk would give the residence a really fine water aspect, especially if you wanted to kayak or stand-up paddle board.
The house and its grounds are zoned community and educational, which is likely to put some developers off, but the property has been a residence for more than 50 years so there may be scope to argue in its favour.
Extending to 650sq m, the property is Ber exempt on account of it being a religious building.
The property is seeking €750,000 through Jordan Auctioneers and could make a really fine family home, where there is scope to grow your own vegetables and even keep bees as one of the brothers used to do. It might also make a really nice guesthouse or boutique hotel.
