Dublin 6: €2.4m Michael Collins hid there and the Cabinet of the first Dail met in a redbrick trapped in time. Rose Doyle reports.
In 1866, one Robert Samuels bought a plot of land in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh. A short time later, he built two pairs of high redbrick houses with two storeys over garden level and granite steps to their front doors.
He's unlikely to have foreseen the life and times on the cards for one of his houses, the accommodating role number 12 Appian Way would play in the nation's history, the shelter it would afford to patriots and politicians.
He couldn't have known about the secret room-to-be there either, in which a fugitive Michael Collins would find refuge. Nor the great affection which would lead to one of its owners living there for a 94-year long lifetime.
12 Appian Way, with it redoubtable history, is for sale for the first time since it was bought by Mr Brendan O'Connor in 1937. He paid £95O for it, borrowed from The Royal Liver Friendly Society, and would afterwards claim he'd been put to the pin of his collar repaying what was then an enormous sum.
It is for sale through Lisney which is guiding €2.4 million in advance of its auction on May 12th.
O'Connor was reared in number 12, moving there in l911 as a child of four when his father, journalist Henry O'Connor, began renting the house for his family of seven children and wife Ellen. In the turbulent years of the War of Independence the Cabinet of the first Dail as well as members of the GHQ of the IRA held meetings there which were attended by people like Austin Stack, Cathal Brugha, Arthur Griffith and Constance Markievicz.
A secret room, reached through a concealed opening in the wall on the turn of the stairs, is about 10ft deep, 3.5ft high and 4ft wide. It would have held half a dozen people at a squeeze and successfully concealed a fugitive Michael Collins.
Brendan O'Connor was a renowned mountaineer who in 1959 was one of the first Irishmen to climb the Matterhorn. He was the founder too of the Kerry Mountain Rescue Association. An archive of newspaper cuttings, an invaluable autograph book, letters, pictures, drawings and all manner of memorabilia exist to tell the story the house.
Located on a corner site which allows for a more than 100ft long rear garden, the three-four-bedroomhouse has a floor area of some 22sq m (2,368sq ft).
The original ground floor reception rooms have been preserved in a fascinating time warp. New owners will undoubtedly refurbish and modernise but will at least have seen their home as it was through the years - and understand why RTÉ used it to film a major TV series some years ago.
The garden and first floors were renovated and lived in independently by family members over the years. O'Connor occupied the ground floor, his affection for the house such that he happily left the reception rooms inviolate.
These are arrested-in-time grandeur itself. A pair of long sash windows in the front drawingroom area are draped with full-length heavy lace curtains, elaborate cornicing has a shamrock-like motif and the ceiling roses carry a weight of detail. The floor is timber and the marbl fireplace has an interesting tiled inset. The rear diningroom area has a shuttered window, timber floor, cornicework, centre rose and dappled marble fireplace with built in bookshelves on either side. All of the doors are panelled and have brass knobs. Some have finger plates. On this floor too there is a bathroom and separate toilet.
The first floor has a main bedroom to the front from where a pair of original sash windows overlook the tennis club opposite. Laminated flooring covers original floorboards, the original marble fireplace with cast-iron inset is intact as is the coving. A second bedroom on this floor has a rear PVC window with good views of the garden which may once have been part of the avenue to long demolished Tivoli House. There is an original, cast-iron fireplace in this room as well as coving and built-in wardrobes. The third bedroom is small. There is a bathroom on a higher, half return.
The bright garden level has a rear fourth bedroom/sittingroom with a cast-iron fireplace relocated here from an upstairs room. A front facing livingroom has two windows and an alcove chimney breast with free standing gas fired stove. There is a tiled shower room and a kitchen with a tiled floor and range of fittings.
The gravelled front, with plenty of off-street parking, sweeps around the side where there is a garage and pedestrian access. The rear garden has old trees; three beech and a walnut; as well as old-style blooms such as rhododendrons, montbretia and blue bells. Grey squirrels visit its peace early in the year and a few daffodils are in bloom.
