Seagrange, a 594sq m (6,394sq ft) five-bedroom detached, period house on three-quarters of an acre facing the sea in Sandycove, is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald, seeking €10 million.
It’s a lot of money but the price is perhaps not surprising given that in summer 2022, its immediate neighbour, St Kilda, a slightly larger house, sold for €12 million, and Mornington House, a Georgian house on 0.42 of an acre next to it, sold for €7.2 million.
All the houses, hidden away close to the Forty Foot bathing place and Joyce Martello tower, have gardens that run down to the sea and are sheltered from the crowds and parking chaos that have followed the increased post-Covid popularity of sea swimming.
Seagrange is a villa-style house built in 1840, single-storey at the front, two-storey at the back. Sold after auction in 2000 for €4.25 million, it has been completely refurbished and modernised, effectively rebuilt, with double-glazed windows and underfloor heating. It has a B3 energy rating.
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The entrepreneur who bought it is downsizing now that his children are grown. Potential buyers for this kind of property may be overseas buyers, Irish people who’ve made money abroad returning from the US, UK or Dubai, or perhaps a local buyer who has sold a company here, says selling agent Weston Desmond.
All that can be seen of the property through iron gates on Sandycove Avenue East is the long gravelled driveway lined by tall hedges. It opens on to a formal garden stretching down towards the sea: a railed balcony at its end – described by agent Sherry FitzGerald as the “prow walk” – leads from one side of the garden to the other, looking out over the rocks below to the wide sweep of Dublin Bay, from Bulloch Harbour across to Howth. (A door in the wall below is blocked up, preventing direct access to the water.)
When Seagrange was last for sale The Irish Times described it as a compound, with several small houses adjacent to the main building. It has been revamped as a single home with a separate studio mews opening on to Sandycove Lane, a cul-de-sac off Sandycove Avenue East running down to the sea.
A short flight of granite steps leads up to the main house, where double doors beneath a fanlight open into a tiled porch with a matching fanlight over an inner door and then into the front hall. Floored like most of the rooms in the original part of the house with polished timber, it looks down to the tall stained glass window at the other end, beside stairs to the ground floor. Period details include original mahogany doors, marble fireplaces, panelling, coving and centre roses.
At this level, accommodation consists of formal reception rooms on either side of the hall at the front of the house, the kitchen, main bedroom and a bathroom. The very large modern kitchen/livingroom/diningroom opens off the formal diningroom on the left. The handsome main bedroom suite has its own terrace overlooking the gardens, with four double bedrooms, all en suite, below on the ground floor.
Seagrange has been staged for sale and is in walk-in condition. The drawingroom on the right of the front hall has a large marble fireplace with coal-effect gas fire and a large window looking out to sea. A door from the formal diningroom on the left opens into a hall which then opens into the kitchen. The doors into both reception rooms have elaborate period-style plasterwork over them.
The 110sq m (1,184sq ft) kitchen – fitted with Gaggenau appliances – is floored with pale tiles and runs from the front to the back of the house: it has an arched, high ceiling, with a glazed conservatory-style ceiling over the front seating area where wide French doors open on to a terrace overlooking the gardens and the sea. One side of the long island in the centre has a timber-topped breakfast bar. A spiral staircase leads from the kitchen to the family room on the ground floor.
The main bedroom suite in the original part of the house is luxurious: a huge dressingroom has a wall of floor-to-ceiling wardrobes; the bedroom has French doors opening on to a small terrace. A large en suite bathroom floored with polished marble tiles has a shower and an oval bath.
Downstairs, off a Marmoleum-tiled hall, are four double bedrooms, a utility room, an open space with a pool table in it and a family/TV room. This is a comfortable room with a stove and a wide curve of windows.
All the bedrooms, two large and two slightly smaller doubles, are en suite – smart, like all the bathrooms in the house – and in one, dubbed the Rock Room, is quirky protrusion of granite. Another bedroom has double doors opening into one of two courtyard gardens at the back of Seagrange.
The separate two-storey mews is accessed from the courtyards and also from Sandycove Lane through a pedestrian gate (which has security code and a camera). It consists of a studio apartment above a double garage. The 46.4sq m (500sq ft) studio, which could be a guest room/au pair’s room/study is an open plan space with a shower room, kitchenette and a pull-down wall bed. A corner window looks down on to Sandycove Lane. The garage has an electric up and-over door on to the lane.
The gardens of Seagrange are formal, three lawns divided by paths stepping down towards the sea with terraced seating areas. Trees and shrubs include Himalayan birch, cordyline, golden ash, quince, camellia and fuchsia – and the dramatic-looking remains of a large ash tree. Steps at the end lead up to the “prow walk”; the initials of grandchildren are spelt out in a pebbled path leading back up to the house. An original small garden room, which has diamond-paned windows, could be an artist’s studio.
