THE PLUSH south Dublin home from which an elderly couple were evicted two months ago is for sale with a price tag of €900,000.
St Matthias Wood is a gated enclave of five houses off the rather dreary Church Road on the outer fringes of Killiney, close to the N11 and Junction 16 of the M50.
The front door to Number 4 is painted in a reassuringly masculine shade of Garda Síochána blue but the lock is broken – a first clue that this is no ordinary house sale. Two cheerful, tabloid-reading security guards, hired from the other side of Dublin, are ensconced in a vast kitchen, getting an eyeful of how “the other half” lived.
In a cobbled yard outside, a tiger-striped, green-eyed pussycat miaows pitifully. The poor craythur – a stray, allegedly – claws at a rubbish bag which, happily, yields a half-eaten sandwich.
A boom-time fat-cat now reduced to scavenging scraps.
The owners of the house have vamoosed. On April 18th, in the most high-profile eviction since the Great Famine, Brendan Kelly (71) and his German-born wife, Asta (63), were ejected in the full glare of the media.
Oh, how the silk curtains in Ireland’s richest suburbs must have twitched as scenes normally confined to Victorian prints were re-enacted in the clipped-hedge south county heartlands.
Castle Rackrent meets Wisteria Lane.
Mr Kelly bemoaned the “absolutely brutal manner” adopted by the bailiffs and said “we might as well be back in the 19th century” – an era when cold-hearted landlordism was rife in Ireland and weeping Mayo shawlies were frequently turfed out of humble cabins.
. . . a reminder of the days when we were ‘worth it’
KILLINEY €900,000:Public sympathy for the couple evaporated when it emerged that they had assembled a vast portfolio of properties – including 13 apartments in London – and hadn't made a repayment on the Killiney house's €2.2 million mortgage to the Irish Nationwide Building Society for three years.
The asking price now represents a startling price drop since the Kellys paid a reputed €3.2 million for the house – just eight years ago – when it was newly-built by the Castlepark Building Company in 2004.
The slightly claustrophobic, secluded development is shoe-horned into the former grounds of a mansion. Number 4 is a redbrick, three-storey, neo-Victorian detached house with off-street parking for at least three cars. The house, named “Kilbarron” in gold lettering on a pale marble plaque set in a perimeter wall, is for sale by private treaty through the Dún Laoghaire branch of Douglas Newman Good.
Estate agent David Dobbs described it as a “beautiful family home” but the 353sq m (3,800sq ft) of accommodation, while in very good nick, requires an infusion of character and cosmetic re-touching.
A spacious, marble-tiled hallway leads to a very large livingroom with a solid beech floor, a library and an open-plan kitchen and conservatory.
Upstairs, there are five bedrooms – three en-suite – arranged over two floors and some have views towards the Dublin and Wicklow mountains.
This is the type of house which was referred to as an “executive home” during the years of our national folie des grandeurs and has all the paraphernalia of the L’Oréal “because you’re worth it” era – including central vacuuming, a surround-sound system and a video-display intercom system. Those were the days, indeed.
An attractive, west-facing garden – not quite as big as it ought to be – is nicely paved and planted but has no lawn and is marred by a (removable) large water feature which looks like, and may very well be, a hideous contemporary art “installation”. Another eviction looms.
4, St Matthias Wood, Killiney, Co Dublin
Description: Redbrick, three-storey, neo-Victorian detached house with off-street parking
Agent: Douglas Newman Good
