Yeats house on Coliemore Road sells ahead of Sotheby’s contents auction

Once the For Sale sign went up in April it didn't take long for Cliff House just outside Dalkey village on Coliemore Road to find a buyer. The Block has learned that the landmark pink house – familiar to anyone living locally – and former family home of poet WB Yeats's son Michael Yeats, has sold.

Selling agent Rosie Mulvany of Sherry FitzGerald wouldn't be drawn on the sale, but it's understood locally that the final price came in at around €2.25m. The handsome property, which launched to market with an asking price of €2.5million, requires substantial further investment to bring it up to modern living standards.

The swift sale of the Regency property ties in neatly with the pending auction of its contents in Sotheby’s in London on September 27th. Cliff House became the final repository for much of the high profile 20th century family’s personal effects.

The “Yeats Family Collection” sale in New Bond Street will be one of the biggest auctions of Irish cultural heritage ever. The paintings, letters and personal belongings of the family have a combined top valuation of £1.9 million (€2.1 million) and could net much more than the house itself.

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More than 200 lots will go under the hammer, and most of the artworks in the collection have not been seen in public in more than 30 years.

The collection comprises the belongings of John Butler and his four influential children, held at Cliff House for many years by WB Yeats's son Michael Yeats, the late Fianna Fáil senator and MEP, one-time cathaoirleach of the Seanad, and first Irish vice-president of the European Parliament who died in 2007.

Perhaps the new owners of Cliff House will be tempted to restore some items from the collection to the family home. Not least WB Yeats’s writing desk – valued at up to £30,000 (€33,800)– or the Yeats family dining table – reputedly bought with his Nobel Prize-money, which has a top estimate of £2,500 (€2,850).