In his writings, noted Irish author and Booker Prize-winner John Banville notes his aunt‘s old flat on Upper Mount Street as the inspiration for the setting for his protagonist, Dr Quirke, the fictional pathologist in the crime novels he wrote under the pen name Benjamin Black. He later wrote in the Guardian of the “dilapidated grandeur” of her flat where “Yeats’s daughter Anne” was a neighbour and Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh was “a frequenter of the front steps, a vantage from which he could scowl across at the offices of the Dolmen Press, Dublin’s leading publishers of poets, though not Kavanagh”.
Commenced around 1790, the street was constructed to link the Grand Canal to Merrion Square and Leinster House, and it is noted on the National Built Heritage Service’s website that it is “indicative of [the] piecemeal nature of its construction, that the north side [is] notably less grand than the south”. It also notes that St Stephen’s Church provides “an interesting centrepiece” at the end of the street.
Sherry FitzGerald has just launched number 3 Mount Street Upper to the market, which began life back in 1810, having been constructed in a series of four (numbers 1 to 4) residences that sat behind fine cobweb fanlights.
Number 3 operated as commercial offices for the past few decades where the likes of accountants, medical services and a language school operated from its 216sq m (2,325sq ft) space. With four floors over a basement, the house has recently been transformed back to a residential unit under the guidance of architect Michael Cullinan of MV Cullinan Architects.
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Its size is important. In comparison to its peers around the corner on Merrion Square, it‘s a far more manageable space where staff were originally required to run a multitude of rooms in days gone by.
Number 3 is three bays wide with a south-facing aspect. “You [would usually] have to go to the palatial sized homes around the corner to have this feature, so it has all these qualities, but in a much more compact form,” says Cullinan.
He describes the staircase that runs over five floors as an “essential ingredient” to its charm. “Very few houses in Dublin have a staircase design such as number 3. At the top you have a square stairs, then descending it becomes a helical [curved] stairs ending up as a dog-legged stairs below,” says Cullinan.
Now in turnkey condition, all the headaches associated with renovating a protected structure are over, and new technology, such as Gutex insulation, has been fitted, along with lime plaster, to make the house run more efficiently.
The house design has incorporated a self-contained apartment at basement level, which could potentially be rented out or used as separate accommodation for a family member.
The property now has four bedrooms in total: two on the third floor, the principal on the second and a fourth at basement level. A kitchen and diningroom lie just inside the front hallway with a wonderful well-lit livingroom on the first floor. Thanks to the layout of the returns, the first floor now has a study, while a WC services the kitchen/dining area return.
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Further interest is the fact that the house has three cellars, and these take “the form of deep arched basements that extend to the middle of the road,” Cullinan says. With vaulted ceilings, one is used as a plant room and one of the others serves as storage for the apartment at basement level.
What is on offer here is a medium-sized Georgian residence a stone’s throw from Merrion Square that Cullinan describes as “packing a punch way above its weight” due to its location, three-bay width and, most importantly, its south-facing aspect.
Ber-exempt as it is a protected structure, the turnkey house is likely to appeal to those with a love of Georgian architecture in search of a manageable home. Sherry FitzGerald is seeking €1.5 million for the house which has a parking space to the rear and a self-contained basement-level apartment.
