A pair of Regency homes in the Irish capital were restored and transformed – but they still have a tale to tell…
Behind every historic facade lurks a tale of social and economic upheaval. Take those belching, satanic factories which once lined the waterways of Britain. Now many of these relics of the Industrial Revolution have been cleaned up and converted into apartments, and rebranded by estate agents as desirable waterside living. Or consider those grandiose Edwardian banks with their forests of fat stone columns and coffered ceilings, doomed by digital disruption to be turned from temples of commerce into members’ clubs or all-day drinking dens.
Colm Doyle’s Dublin home has had a similarly tumultuous past. Built in the early 19th century for prosperous Anglo-Irish lawyers, the two adjacent townhouses were bought by a building society in the 1960s. The brickwork was clad in what Doyle, an architect, calls “modernism on the cheap” – concrete slabs and the ground floor knocked into an open-plan space with a sprawling extension added at the back. Then came the credit crunch of 2008. The bank collapsed and the five-storey building slid into decay before it was repossessed by the state.
“When we first saw the place it had been empty and on the market for several years,” says Doyle, who shares the house with his partner, Peter O’Reilly. “There was dry rot, and the basement was flooded.” But Doyle, who heads up DMVF, a thriving architectural practice in the city, trained his gaze beyond the dereliction: “We were looking for a larger place in the centre of town with a decent outdoor space. Apart from mews houses or modern apartments, Dublin’s housing stock is pretty thin. This place answered our needs. I was inspired by the idea of breathing new life into an old building.” At first the price was too high. Three years later, after selling their apartment, Doyle returned, emboldened. “We put in a ludicrously low offer and were accepted.”
To fund the project, Doyle decided to lease the ground floor to a restaurant. “It also fitted the character of the area, which is full of shops and local businesses,” he says. Upstairs, three floors were knocked through to create a light-suffused, three-bedroom house or what Doyle smilingly refers to as “living above the shop”. At street level, Doyle designed the classical front door, a “lie” made up of stone steps and stucco columns discovered in the basement: “It captures the status of the 19th-century building.” The sash windows were restored and the “ferociously damaged” brickwork repaired and rubbed with soot to match the original bricks.
Behind the frontage, Doyle, who is a conservation expert with Modernist leanings, was keen to demarcate between old and new elements: “By making a distinction between the original architecture and modern interventions you tell the story of the house clearly,” he says. The new staircase, which glides from ground to first floor, is made from charred oak for a minimalist feel and contrasts with the original twirling stairs at the top of the house. At the back, a lift used to haul coins from cash tills to store rooms was replaced with a glazed double-height space where Crittall doors lead to a roof terrace.
Doyle enlisted gardener Mark Grehan to design the planting for what was once a “revoltingly ugly” flat roof: soft grasses, bamboo, alliums and lavender which fade from green to silver in winter. Doyle also designed the raised bed which screens the dining area, adding vertical lines of slate paving to echo the Mondrian lines of the extension.
Before the bank moved in, the houses had been divided into bedsits but, luckily, some Regency details remain. On the first floor, where ceilings soar to 11ft 6in, the shutters are original and Doyle restored the pine flooring. He designed the double doors which link drawing and dining room, based on 19th-century originals. The two fireplaces, which frame the space like a cosy embrace, were found in a skip and painted to match the pebble-grey woodwork.
For a long time the rooms were empty. “We had a series of derelict dinner parties over three weeks; one each week for friends and then for family.” Afterwards, Doyle’s parents bought them the 12ft long, 18th-century dining table, its “seriousness” offset by Fornasetti plates and strutting flamingo lamp.
There is space for guests in the kitchen, a “bright, white” contrast to the traditional reception rooms. The cabinetry is bespoke but the floor is a cheat: tiles cut up and laid in a herringbone pattern for a poor man’s parquet effect or, as Doyle puts it, “As an architect it’s my job to come up with cost-effective ideas.” In the bathroom, marble offcuts from the kitchen were repurposed to make the vanity unit. In the hallway, the striking artwork turns out to be a piece of handblocked wallpaper, set in an antique frame as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the building’s grander roots.
There is another relic on the terrace where the old building society sign is propped nonchalantly against the wall. Like everything else, the sign has become part of the fabric of this singular building, a reminder of the chequered narrative which lies behind every historic house.
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