Mount Mapas, a large detached house overlooking the sea between Victoria Road and Vico Road, Killiney, Co Dublin, made headlines when it sold at auction for £2.3 million in 1997 – £900,000 over its pre-auction guide price. Lisney auctioneer Tom Day told the bidders that day that they were unlikely to see “another house like it this century”. Twenty-eight years later, in the 21st century, Lisney agent Rory Kirwan has put a guide price of €10 million on Mount Mapas, calling it “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to own a coastal Georgian masterpiece”.
Anyone who has walked up the Vico Road from Killiney beach may already have seen the steeply tiered formal gardens of Mount Mapas sloping down towards the sea. The wide manicured lawns with colourful plants, sheltered by tall trees and with a pond at the centre, are visible from the pavement and many walkers stop here to enjoy views of the gardens as well as the sea. But the Georgian house to which the gardens belong is hidden behind the high curved stone wall across the road.
Mount Mapas, a 585sq m (6,300sq ft) six-bed on 1.25 acres, has been extensively refurbished in the past few decades and is a handsome house with lots of original decorative plasterwork, polished wooden floors, double-glazed sash windows and multiple marble fireplaces in the main rooms. Yet the property’s standout features are its unobstructed Killiney Bay views and the gardens, divided by the Vico Road: a path leads from the lawn outside the house down steps to a locked gate: across the road, another wrought-iron gate opens on to paths that lead down through the tiered lawn. There’s access to Killiney Beach from a secret garden at the bottom of the tier, not visible from the road.
This part of south Dublin has long been a magnet for the rich and famous: neighbours include Enya, whose house Manderley Castle (formerly called Ayesha Castle) is next door and Bono at the other end of Vico Road.
Mount Mapas was the first house built on Victoria Road, at the junction of Victoria and Vico Roads. A John Mapas (or Malpas) had acquired land in the area in the mid-18th century and it’s believed that a Thomas Bourchier built it some time after 1797. In 1827 an ad appeared in a newsletter offering Mount Mapas for rent “for the year or for the season. The house is Furnished except Feather Beds and Bedding and contains a Parlour, Drawing room and Seven Bed chambers with Apartments for Male and Female servants ... and the most private Sea Bathing at all hours of the day. The singularly picturesque beauty of this place is universally acknowledged.”
In 1834 it was bought by lawyer and property developer Robert Warren, who built Mount Eagle house next door and other tenants included a manager of the Irish Independent, top civil servants and a chief secretary for Ireland. It wasn’t easy to build: the man-made terrace it sits on was formed by the construction of the roughly 8m-high curved granite wall.
Mount Mapas is an executor sale following the death of its owner. After buying the property in 1997, he revamped it extensively, rewiring, replumbing, re-roofing and wrapping the house and adding solar panels: it is Ber exempt as a protected structure – although it wasn’t protected when the renovation was carried out.
Mount Mapas is a pretty pink house, single storey over basement at the front but spread over three levels at the rear following extensions done over the years. A wrought-iron veranda runs across the front of the house, framing a glossy maroon front door. It opens into a hall floored, like most of the reception rooms, with polished timber. The house is decorated throughout in lavish period style: ornate golden wallpaper, rich rugs, handsome period furniture and marble fireplaces in nearly all the reception rooms complement ornate ceiling plasterwork. It has been meticulously maintained and has unexpected features like a steam shower in the main en suite, a sauna and central vacuuming. Mount Mapas also has its own well with a pump, needed for the large garden, and a diesel generator.
The drawingroom on the left of the front door has a deep and wide bay window with a window seat in one corner making the most of sea views from Bray Head to Dalkey Island; the diningroom on the right has deep red walls and a roughly 5ft-high marble mantelpiece. Stairs at the end of the diningroom lead down to a cosy sittingroom and stairs halfway down the front hall to a large reception hall/sittingroom framed by Grecian columns on the left. This room leads to a livingroom at the back of the house, with a large sunroom/conservatory opening off it.
The kitchen/breakfastroom is at the opposite side of the house: it has a polished granite-topped island and countertops and a glossy black Aga but is relatively modest in size by current standards. New owners might want to reorganise the layout of the house, creating the kind of large open-plan kitchen/livingroom that’s currently popular – in this large house, there’s plenty of room to manoeuvre.
A few stairs up from the front hall lead to a bright landing with a long skylight over it. There are four double bedrooms at this level, two with en suites and a small study. The main bedroom has a deep and wide bay window with a window seat with excellent views, like the drawingroom below it. A long hall at basement level is painted a vivid orange with white panels below. There are two more bedrooms off it, one en suite, a large bathroom with a sauna, utility room and a sittingroom with a bay window (and another marble fireplace) with a door opening into the garden.
Two gardeners have been employed full-time to tend Mount Mapas’s gardens, a series of sloping lawns surrounded by tall trees and richly planted beds that include aeoniums, lupins, peonies, hydrangeas, cordylines and many more. A small waterfall flows under a little bridge into a pond in a courtyard behind the house. A path leads from here down the side of the lawn to the Vico Road and the Mount Mapas gardens on the sea side. Steep steps and paths lead through the gardens – divided by walls and hedges – finishing on a terrace hidden from view. Built into the wall beside it is a kitchen, a toilet and a garden store. A path from this terrace leads steeply down to connect with the public right of way across the Dart line on to Killiney beach.
The entrance to Mount Mapas is near the bottom of Victoria Road, the road that runs from a roundabout on Killiney Hill Road under an archway to Vico Road. A driveway circles around the front of the house – there’s plenty of room to park here and in a courtyard at the back.
