A covetable piece of heritage for the price of a posh two-bedroom apartment in the Malahide area.
Address: The Gate Lodge, Seamount Road, Malahide, Co. Dublin, K36TX61
Asking price: €625,000
Agent: O’Farrell Cleere
Built possibly as a gate lodge to Seamount House, once the seat of the whiskey distilling Jameson family, this charming property first came to market last August, seeking €750,000.
Set on about 0.15 of an acre in a corner of what is now the Jameson Orchard housing estate, it is on a bend in the road on Seamount Road.
The 89-square-metre house is listed.
This may have put buyers off, says estate agent Walter Mythen of O’Farrell Cleere, who’s put it back on the market with a large haircut of €125,000, a reduction of just over 16 per cent on the original asking price.
Now seeking €625,000, the charm remains.
Renovation costs will likely be the issue, and finding builders experienced in this type of refurbishment will be the real challenge the next buyer will face.
That doesn’t stop it from being a postcard pretty and on a decent-sized plot in a very desirable part of town.
Seamount House was originally built sometime before 1816 on the Talbot estate of nearby Malahide Castle. Around 1890, it became a summer home for the Jamesons.
The date of the gate lodge isn’t established, but it has all the hallmarks of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Edwardian era, which is once again fashionable with the opportunity to play with the art nouveau flourishes and decorative prints of the era.
In this context, it means modest-sized rooms with fireplaces and good ceiling heights, but that doesn’t detract from its plentiful charm.
It is painted vanilla white with its mock Tudor blacked timber beams now a periwinkle blue.
The construction is believed to be timber.
“The house is timber above finished ground floor level with rising walls of brick below,” explains Mythen.
Currently, the ground floor of the property is laid out as six rooms.
There are two bedrooms at this level, a living room, a separate kitchen cum diner and the property’s only bathroom.
The current owners got permission to build a mezzanine level that is open to the ground floor and to install roof lights.
This is considered the third bedroom.
More could be made of this space.
The next owner might turn the living room into the third bedroom and make the mezzanine the lounge.
Glazing in the void would dim down sound transfer, create a sense of privacy and still allow valuable light through.
The three-bedroom, one-bathroom detached residence has electric heating and an E1 BER rating.
There is scope to extend the detached residence. The next owner could, subject to deep pockets, consider adding an extension, linked to the main house by a glass corridor.
Even upgrading the existing property to improve its BER will be intrusive and costly.
But none of this detracts from the fact that it is a charming property that offers those looking in that price bracket a unique home on its own grounds, for a price similar to many two-bedroom apartments in the area.
