Haughey's principal intervention was to turn a room into a traditional Irish pub Charles Haughey ran Abbeville like a country squire, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor.
Was it not a supreme irony that Mr Charles J. Haughey would come to own a splendid Georgian house that was built by John Beresford, the first chairman of the Revenue Commissioners? Especially as the former Taoiseach had to dispose of 15 acres to settle his tax affairs.
Beresford, too, was one of the most enduringly powerful political figures of his day. Certainly, nobody else achieved what he did; by building the Custom House so far down river from the city's old commercial core around Capel Street, he shifted Dublin's centre of gravity eastwards.
Abbeville was largely designed by James Gandon, the English architect brought over by Beresford in 1781 to work on his controversial Custom House project. He went on to design the Four Courts, the King's Inns and the House of Lords portico of the old parliament in College Green.
There was a 17th-century house on the site in Kinsealy, seven miles north-east of Dublin, but Gandon greatly enlarged it and gave Abbeville its grandeur. He also reversed its entrance front to face the main road, marked by a porch with a great fanlight over the door, and installed a ballroom.
As shown in photographs by Jacqueline O'Brien in a 1996 book, Abbeville, by Mary Rose Doorly, most of the interiors are neo-classical, in the Adam style, apart from one room which is curiously gothic. Mr Haughey's principal intervention was to turn another room into a traditional Irish pub.
Designed by Sam Stephenson, the bar counter came from a bank and other fittings were salvaged from pubs that were being remodelled in the early 1970s. Most of the other work on the house and its Gandon-designed stables was done by two other well-known architects, Arthur Gibney and Austin Dunphy.
Most of the art on the walls is personal, including a portrait of Seán Lemass that dominates the diningroom. Over its door hangs a Robert Ballagh portrait of Mr Haughey himself addressing a Fianna Fáil ardfheis in 1981; it has a megalomaniacal quality which Mussolini might have recognised.
Mr Haughey had a triple- tiered fountain and trefoil- shaped pool installed in front of the house, on the axis of its entrance and linked to it by a cobbled pathway. He also planted numerous broadleaf trees to maintain the wooded character of the 250-acre estate, including his favourite ginko.
He ran Abbeville like a country squire - and ran the country from his study. Having grown up in a humble home in Donnycarney, he revelled in the grandeur of his ascendancy mansion. "You would want to be a soulless creature not to be affected by its style and elegance," he told Doorly.
So it must have pained him greatly when he sold 15 acres on its road frontage in 2000 to property developers Treasury Holdings for £6 million (€7.6 million), so that he could pay a demand from the Revenue for tax, interest and penalties on the money he had received from businessman Ben Dunne.
This parcel of land had been zoned for commercial and other uses in the context of developing Kinsealy village. The estate was also capable of being serviced as Mr Haughey had agreed to allow a sewerage pipe to be run across it to serve Baskin Cottages, a group of houses on adjoining land.
The initiative for this development in 1989 came not from Dublin County Council, but from the Department of the Environment when Mr Pádraig Flynn was Minister, and it was widely seen then - not least by former Fine Gael TD and councillor Ms Nora Owen - as a vehicle to open up Abbeville.
In 2001, Mr Haughey appeared to have agreed terms with Treasury for the disposal of the estate for £30 million (€38 mil- lion), with the proviso that he would have the right to live in the house until his death. "The land is entirely rezonable apart from its owner," a spokesman for Treasury said at the time.
Though this deal was never completed, there had long been suspicions that Mr Haughey's long-term goal was to have the estate rezoned for housing, pocket the money and move to an equivalently grand house elsewhere.
It became inevitable that Abbeville would be sold, sooner or later. Rezoning the land for housing might even be said to comply with the objective of strategic planning guidelines to consolidate the metropolitan area. The house is listed for preservation and might then be refurbished as a luxury hotel.