“We bought it by accident,” says the owner of 15 Vesey Place. Almost 25 years ago, the couple had been looking for a London flat, but the house, which had been divided into 12 bedsits, turned up on the market. “My brother in law bid on it for us, and I remember him calling us in London and saying ‘Well, I have good news and bad news for you . . .”
Fortunately the architect owner relished a challenge and, a year later, the house had been returned to how it must have been in its Victorian heyday, albeit with some very nice contemporary twists. The bedsits had just been partitioned off, so when they stripped the partitions back, the owners found all the original features intact, including a beautiful stained- glass window on the top floor.
From the top you get sea views, and in winter, when the trees in Willow Bank Park to the front lose their leaves, you can see the sea from the lower levels too.
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“We moved the kitchen to the ground floor. Lots of people live in these houses and they walk past the best rooms, but we wanted those to be the rooms we use every day.”
This clever arrangement of the 337sq m (3,360sq ft) of living space puts the generous kitchen, that can happily accommodate dinner for 18, and adjacent family room on the ground floor.
The atmosphere is relaxed, despite the formality of the period proportions. Go up a level to a gorgeous livingroom and the kind of library/study space you’d relish working in, and then up again to find three of the five bedrooms. The other two are at garden level.
“We used to work from home, down here,” the owner says. “But when our kids became teenagers, they wanted these for their rooms. That’s the nicest thing about the house,” he adds. “The way it’s changed with us over the years.”
The house is gorgeous, and the location couldn’t be better either – an easy walk to the sea, the Dart, the shops and schools. “The kids could become very independent very early on.”
Priced at €1.85 million with Sherry FitzGerald, number 15 is just asking to make another family very happy indeed.
