In his Whitbread-winning book Under the Eye of the Clock, published in 1987, the author Christopher Nolan wrote that “casts of worms mark Dollymount Strand”. At that time he was living with his parents, Joe and Bernie, and his sister, Yvonne, in Clontarf, with Dollymount just down the road. But when the family moved to Fairwinds, on Shielmartin Road in Sutton, Christy could see either side of Dollymount along a long tract of the Dublin coastline, and could observe the changing moods of the sky and seascape. And from 1995 until his sudden death, in 2009, this view was his constant inspiration; he told his sister that 60 per cent of his work was “sitting, thinking”.
Oxygen deprivation at Christy Nolan’s traumatic birth, in 1965, caused him to have cerebral palsy, a physical disability which meant that head and neck control were his strongest voluntary movements. In the early 1970s, through the fierce, kind, ingenious determination of his mother, Bernie, the family moved from their small farm near Mullingar to a house beside the Central Remedial Clinic in Clontarf. At school there, he was taught to communicate using a typewriter and a “unicorn stick” strapped to his forehead, with Bernie’s supportive hands under his chin.
Christy later attended school at Mount Temple and, in 1981, when he was 15, he published Dam-Burst of Dreams, a volume of poems and short stories. He started a degree in English at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), attending every day with Bernie and their cassette recorder, preserving Brendan Kennelly’s and Terence Brown’s lectures. However, as much as he loved studying he couldn’t continue that and write his own books as well. And that’s where Fairwinds comes into his story.
By 1995, Christy had published two best-selling books and was working on The Banyan Tree. Joe and Bernie, then in their late 50s, were seeking to move with him, and after some time searching they discovered their ideal home in this extended bungalow. It had a wide corridor for Christy’s wheelchair, a study and a bedroom downstairs for him, and the most amazing 180-degree sea views, says Yvonne, an independent TV producer and literary journalist. “Even with Christy’s challenges, he could not but be aware of what was outside ... for a writer, it helps to have somewhere to be vacant.”
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Christy’s study, though, is at the back of the house, with fewer windows to limit distractions. Yvonne has donated his archive and some personal effects, including his typewriter, to Trinity College, where archivist Ellen O’Flaherty has begun work on the collection. With writers, she says, “we look for unique material — correspondence, drafts, diaries, handwritten or typewritten documents — to help show the process of literary creativity.”
Fairwinds was built in 1953 and in the early 1970s the Hare Krishna religious community bought the bungalow and established their temple there. In the mid-1980s, the next owners restored and extended it to 353 sq m (3,800 sq ft), adding rooms upstairs and downstairs to take advantage of the views. Upstairs are four bedrooms, of which one is en suite and three share a main bathroom. The Ber is E1.
Downstairs, past the study, there are two bedrooms, one en suite; the livingrooms (one of them split-level) are to the right, and their huge Dublin Bay windows soak up the sea from Portmarnock to Bray. At the other side, the kitchen looks across a nature conservation area to the cliff path that climbs around Howth Head; generations of walkers pass this house on the right after passing the Martello tower on the way back to nearby Sutton Cross. “Mam used to phone me every day,” says Yvonne, “to tell me how busy the path was, always asking ’Can you believe we live here?’”
Her parents had endured years of hardship and adversity, she says, and had an unparalleled work ethic. After leaving their farm and moving to Dublin, Joe so missed the land that he put the Clontarf garden under drills of vegetables, and grew tomatoes in a second-hand glasshouse. At Fairwinds, he did not till the sub-rectangular plot of almost an acre, but there was well-considered planting along the sheltered boundary, and until the end of her life Bernie pottered and potted, always growing sweet-smelling flowers. Joe spent hours with Yvonne and her children on a spot of sand a few steps across from the house, watching seals basking on the sand spits at low tide, and dinghies dotting the waves.
“It was the joy of their lives to live at Fairwinds,” says Yvonne, describing her late parents’ intense feeling of privilege. “We never felt anything but that it’s a happy, peaceful house.”
Fairwinds, at Shielmartin Road, Sutton, Dublin 13, is for sale through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty with an asking price of €1.5 million.
