Georgian apartments are a rarity. There are plenty of mock Georgian units you can buy, but apartments in original buildings, with many of their features intact, are lamentably uncommon in a city whose central quarters are predominately of that era.
Number 7 Fitzwilliam Lane is a late 18th-century, three-bay, four-storey over-basement house, built as a pair with number 6, and forms the end terrace of a cohesive Georgian row lining the west side of the street.
Once in offices, as many of these properties now are, it has been returned to residential with five units in the main part of the building, and a sixth at basement level, which has its own separate entrance.
Number 5 is on the top floor and is set to the back. As a historic building there is no lift, but the stairs are an easy climb thanks to the shallow steps that take you all the way to the top floor, where number 5 shares a small entrance with number 4.
The original features in the common areas are impressive, even if the general condition of these areas is poor. Works were due to commence and have been postponed as a result of Covid. Indeed a levy of €30,000 has been paid by each owner towards these works which, presumably, will include some attention to the moulded cornice and fluted frieze with rosettes over Adamesque ionic columns that greet you in the entrance hall. A new carpet should also be on the list of requirements and repairs will include the small hole on the ceiling of the top floor landing.
Number 5 is a Ber-exempt, duplex unit set to the back of the house over the third floor and fourth floors, and opens into a hall with there is under stairs storage for washing machine and drier. The living room is to the left, which has a fine sash window washing the room in light and enjoys a ceiling height of 3.1 metres. You can see the canal from here, although with the completion of construction at 55 Lad Lane, it will diminish the breadth of the vista, but a part of the canal will remain in your sightline. You can also see the Dublin Mountains from here.
Originally a square room, it now has a stylish wood-burning stove and exposed flue that is set on a tiled base, but isn’t currently working. You will need a stove expert to reopen the flue. The kitchen, which has been retiled, is housed in a hived off corner. This layout works but doesn’t really do the room, its proportions and features, justice. Subject to planning and the advice of a conservation architect, it might be possible to play with the overall layout from the front door in. You could possibly, subject to planning, reposition the staircase to bring the window in the stairwell into the overall room in some way, or at least all its light in through the use of steel glass internal panels, for example.
Upstairs there are two generous double bedrooms, each with good amounts of built-in wardrobe space and ceiling heights of over 2.5 metres. Internally the flat has been smartly repainted, the bathroom has been retiled and it is eminently rentable, a consideration for parents shopping for a smart flat for children of college-going age that they could trade down to in later life. A couple living in it might think about flipping the layout to give a living room and a separate kitchen upstairs, and house a bedroom in the room downstairs, installing an ensuite where the kitchen currently is.
The current owner only purchased the flat last May when he paid €480,500 for the 85 sq metre/ 914sq ft property. He had planned to return here from overseas but those plans have changed.
The property is now asking €525,000 through agents Felicity Fox. Annual management fees are €3,400 and include bins, which you have to take out through the ritzy front door and walk the length of the block to a bin storage unit to the rear of the building.
Across the city, number 5, a very fine two-bedroom hall-level flat on Mountjoy Square with its own private entrance, original entrance hall and drawing room to the front with separate kitchen, was sale agreed through City Homes at €460,000 earlier this year, but that sale fell through. The 86sq m property, with six-over-six pane timber sash windows, has since been sale agreed at just above its €390,000 asking price.
