A €2m restoration, underground tunnels and a pub – Who will buy ‘the finest house in Dublin’ ?

Asking price: €3m Agent: Move Home (01) 920 3894

Not many people can say that their home once had 106 people living in it all at once — with 20 households lodging throughout all of its rooms.

Before the Dublin-based barrister Fergus Ryan bought the vast No7 Henrietta Street in Dublin 1 in 2017, it had been run down and rented out as artists’ studios. And before that, until the 1960s, it had long been one of the city’s biggest tenements.

But once upon a time, No7 was quite simply Dublin’s finest house, bar none, and a social centre of wealthy society in what was then the second city of the British Empire.

One of the artists who rented a studio prior to Ryan acquiring the building five years ago tells a story about a lady in her nineties who came back to see her childhood home. She was brought there by two younger relations. Before she passed away, she was eager to revisit the top floor room that her family had lived in and where she started her life.

Having been let in and standing at the bottom of the back stairs, suddenly agile, she leapt to the first step and began to sprint upwards — six flights — without stopping and taking her entourage completely by surprise. They had trouble keeping up with her, and when she got to the top she stopped outside what was once her family’s front door.

When they asked for an explanation, she told them that when she was a little girl that stairwell was unlit and pitch black at night. The one toilet for all families in the building was located on the bottom floor, more than 100 steps down. So her mother would tear off a piece of newspaper, screw up one end and dip the other in paraffin.

She’d set it alight and then let it fall down through the stairwell channel — spinning and floating like a firefly to light her daughter’s way. The little girl’s challenge was to keep running, ahead of her falling beacon.

When she had finished downstairs, her mother would drop down another blazing nightlight to help her ascend. She always had to run. She told the artists who greeted her, that No7 might have been a tenement but it was always a happy house.

Exactly 106 people are recorded as living in No7 in the 1911 Census. In the 1960s, the last of those tenants was rehoused and No7 was marked for demolition. But fate intervened in the form of the late architect and conservationist, Uinseann Mac Eoin who bought it to save it from the wrecker’s ball. But he could only afford to preserve it as it was. His son Nuada, also a conservation architect, later took on the property and to pay for its upkeep, let it out as artists’ studios and for various creative projects.

In 2011 the documentary/reality series, The Tenements, was filmed here.Presented by Bryan Murray it set modern families to live in one room and take on the challenges faced by the tenement families who had previously lived at No7, contending with poverty, overcrowding, TB, cold, long, harsh working hours and hunger. Some years ago, Dublin Corporation, now famous for dragging its heels on modern social housing provision, converted nearby No14 into The Dublin Tenement Museum at a cost of €5m. Today it’s one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. Another property in this famous stretch was restored and is now doing well as an exclusive Airbnb.

But No7 is the biggest and best of all of these houses and its roots are far removed from poverty. Henrietta Street was built by Ireland’s richest man, the Irish Parliament member and later Finance Minister Nathaniel Clements. No7 was completed circa 1735 and aged just 30, he moved into what was then Dublin’s best house with his wife Hannah Gore. By the age of 40 he held the job of Ireland’s finance minister. Later in 1751 he built a new house to move to in the Phoenix Park where he once held the job of chief warden. Today it’s better known as Áras An Uachtaráin.

Greystones born barrister Fergus Ryan has long been familiar with No7.

“I trained at Kings Inns so I’d pass it and admire it every day.” When it came up for sale in 2017 priced at €850,000, he decided to buy it, knowing full well that the sheer size of the house at 8,210 sq ft and its condition (much the same as when the tenement families left in the 1960s) meant that it would cost an arm and a leg to put it right. He has since spent more than €2m restoring it.

And as part of the oldest and finest stretch of Georgian homes in the country, its restoration would be heavily restricted and supervised by the authorities.

“I grew up in an old house. I’ve always taken an interest in conservation and I had the money at the time. I thought it would be a worthwhile thing to do but I also knew that it would make the most spectacular home. And it has been an incredible house to live in.”

His progress down through all its five floors was somewhat more considered than that little girl’s. “I started with the top floor and I did it first and then lived on the top while the other work was being done. I worked my way down through the rest of the house,” says Ryan.

“There were people in here working on it for five years solid. I’ve had plaster restorers, painters, wood workers and carpenters, roofers, window experts, electricians and plumbers, the lot.”

Its continual occupation through its years as an artists’ working colony also helped keep its fundamentals in good shape. Old houses need people using them in order to survive, particularly 300 year old ones.

While the windows, some of the floor boards and joinery had perished, the bones turned out to be good. The scale of this house is simply enormous and completely concealed by its masterful Georgian proportions.Its internal usable floor space equates to the combined upper and lower floor areas of eight average semi-detatched family homes. At 8,210 sq ft, were it located in a field in rural Ireland, it would be listed as a mansion.

For a size comparison, consider that Drumleck House in Howth, an 1850’s country-style mansion in north county Dublin, has much the same floor space inside and is currently for sale at €10m.

When Ryan took the house on, it was dank and dark inside with broken floor boards and rotted stair treads. Many of the spindles under the stair bannister had been replaced with simple sticks of crude lumber. But even in its run down state, it was spectacular. Its ceiling stucco work and margins are among the most intricate to be seen in any home in Dublin.

“The original design is extraordinary, the windows are perfect for channelling light through the house as the day progresses.” The excellent light was one of the factors that made it so popular with its resident artists.

“Luckily the original channels opened in it for electricity and plumbing back in the day were sufficient to wire and plumb it again. So we did minimal invasive work.”

The street was named after Dublin’s one time ‘first lady’ Henrietta Crofts, wife of Charles Paulet, 2nd Duke of Bolton and Ireland’s Lord Lieutenant in 1717-21. In its early years it was known simply as ‘Dublin’s Street of Palaces’. This house has an entrance hall that will stop you in your tracks, a big open reception sized light-filled space with the incredible main staircase, one of two that was required in its original build. Regular sized hall chairs look diminutive against its scale. Ireland’s archive of architectural heritage describes the main stair as: “an original double-height open-well staircase and early dog-leg closed-string service stair with original plasterwork and joinery throughout”.

This house also has tunnels and lots of them. Cellars run out right under the street at the front. At the back there’s a significant main channel running under the garden off which are three smaller channels. These are thought to have served for the storage of live animals destined for the kitchens and for protective access to the stables at the end of the garden. They may also have served as an escape route in a country that had yet to go through the risings of 1798 and 1803.

Shortly after acquiring the house, Ryan bought the run-down warehouse building complex adjoining which was once the original stable complex. Today it offers potential for development in its own right or ancillary accommodation or offices for the main house.

The accommodation includes sets of fine reception rooms at both ground floor and first floor level. Included in the renovation is a series of modern additions such as a separate cocktail bar, a wine cellar, a spacious home office, a music lounge and there’s another self-contained kitchen and dining area as part of his original living apartment on the very top floor. The basement level hosts the original kitchen area and breakfast room with a large period fireplace prominently located in the centre. There’s another family living room, the wine cellar, bathroom and the main hallway with access from below to both the front door and the street and the rear doors which lead to the tunnels under the formal garden.

At ground floor level is the front formal drawing room with ceiling coving, an ornate period marble chimney piece, and south-facing original windows. Doors lead through to the formal dining room, also with a period chimney piece and original wooden flooring, high ceilings and windows which overlook the rear garden. Further back is the service staircase to upper and lower floors, and to the rear leading to the study with original floor, coving and chimney piece. There’s also a guest bathroom here. An inner lobby leads to steps down to the garden.

On the first floor is the front sitting room with ultra intricate ceiling cornicing and stucco work, sash windows overlooking the street, working window shutters and a very plush marble chimney piece. Folding doors open through to the upstairs drawing room, again with an intricate ceiling, sash windows and shutters.

Doors from here lead to the newly fitted purpose-built bar and lounge with a bathroom off it. The top two floors have six big bedrooms, three of which are ensuite. There’s also a reading room, a music room and a separate living room.

The master suite is the largest room and located on the third floor with a generous walk-in wardrobe and bathroom. The very top floor to the rear is another cosy living area, with a dining alcove, separate kitchen and leads onto another two generous master bedrooms and another spacious lounge area to the front. The mews complex at the back is accessed directly from large gates onto Henrietta Lane.

“I’ve had great parties and lovely Christmases here but now my children are grown up and there’s just me. So I’m selling,” says Ryan. Move Home is seeking €3m for what is now surely once again Dublin city’s finest home?