Shankill villa back on the market for €5m

Co DublinClontra, a large period house on 19 acres overlooking the sea in Shankill, Co Dublin is back on the market, having failed to find a buyer at auction two years ago.

The 1860s Gothic-style house, designed by Dublin architects Deane and Woodward, is part of a mini estate that lies just 10 miles from the city centre, but maintains a rural feel.

Joint agents Lisney and Jackson-Stops are quoting a guide price of €5 million prior to auction on October 9th.

The property is likely to appeal to house builders, though a recent attempt to have the site rezoned proved unsuccessful. A further rezoning submission has been lodged and a vote is to take place next year. Given its prime location in this fast-growing suburb and the obvious development potential, the issue will invariably arise again in the not-too-distant future.

Clontra is situated on the outskirts of Shankill at the end of Quinn's Road, with a boundary of cliffs on its eastern side.

The buildings include a 1960s family home, a Victorian gate lodge, numerous outbuildings and a striking two storey Gothic villa that was built in 1860-1862 for a Dublin lawyer, James Lawson.

The architects, Sir Thomas Newenham Deane and his young partner, Benjamin Woodward, are best known for having designed the Kildare Street Club and the Museum Building at Trinity College.

In Clontra they took the traditional late Georgian villa design and gave it a highly romantic twist, in Italian Medieval Revival style. The cut granite exterior is topped by a high slate roof with the main entrance under an elaborate trellised veranda.

Inside, a majestic granite staircase rises to the upper floor where the principal rooms are laid out around a central hall. Both the drawingroom and the diningroom are very large spaces with vaulted ceilings and exposed beams.

The drawingroom is decorated with frescoes by the pre-Raphaelite artist John Hungerford Pollen depicting the Seven Ages of Woman.

Pollen also decorated the spaces between the beams with birds, flowers and foliage. The frescoes are now in need of expert restoration, as indeed is most of the house.

There are four bedrooms on the ground floor and a fifth on the upper floor along with a morningroom and a study. The ground floor also has the kitchen, a family room, store room and utility room.

A courtyard to the rear of the house has stables and workshops and access to the walled garden which has a spectacular Gothic-style greenhouse with highly ornamental ironwork.

The modern family house which has its own entrance is a couple of fields distant from the main house.

It has four bedrooms and is in need of refurbishment.