Residential Site: Lisney is quoting excess €1.8 million for Riversdale House - the last home of poet W B Yeats - set on a 1.1-acre site with planning permission for six houses in Rathfarmham. Justin Comiskey reports.

The current planning permission (granted by An Bord Pleanála in March 2003) allows for the development of three four-bedroom detached houses of 150 sq m (1,615 sq ft) and three single storey two-bedroom mews houses of 55 sq m (592 sq ft). It also allows for the restoration of Riversdale House - an 18th century farmhouse of 260 sq m (2,800 sq ft) - and a change in its use to offices.

Riversdale House is located just off the Ballyboden Road in a mature residential area of Rathfarmham about 7kms from the city centre. It is close to a wide range of local leisure, retail and educational facilities.

In May 1999, Riversdale House was bought for £1.53 million and an application was made in August 1999 to demolish the house, outbuildings and a derelict gate lodge to make way for a 28-apartment scheme.

This met with local resistance and, on June 12th, 2000, the house - together with the original gates, piers and arched bridge - were added to South Dublin County Council's list of protected structures.

In December 2000, An Bord Pleanála refused permission for the development.

A further application for a reduced 18-apartment scheme was refused on appeal by An Bord Pleanála in October 2001.

W B Yeats took a 13-year lease on Riversdale House in 1932 and lived there with his wife, George, and children, Anne and Michael. It was the setting for his last meeting with Maude Gonne in 1938 and an encounter with Blue Shirt leader Eoin O'Duffy in 1933.

Yeats is said to have found great solace at the house after the death of Lady Gregory. Two of his poems - What Then? and An acre of grass - are about Riversdale.