Home fit for a president, yours for €4.5m
IT’S not quite the Áras, but for one former resident of this grand home, the Big House in the Park was the next rung on their personal property ladder.
Mary Robinson, inset, lived here before her victory in the 1990 presidential election and left for her new home accompanied by a cavalcade of motorcycle outriders as an Army drummer played in the front garden amid much saluting.
Now, 43 Sandford Terrace, tucked away behind trees on a quiet cul-de-sac off Sandford Road in upmarket Ranelagh, south Dublin, is up for sale again as its current owners decided to downsize.
Mary Robinson’s election triumph in 1990 stunned the Establishment, while she declared: ‘I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system.’
The property’s current owners, two medics, bought the late-Georgian house from the Robinsons in 1991 for €500,000, which might sound a snip now but made waves at the time, even ruffling feathers on Morning Ireland. The Robinsons themselves paid just €220,000 nine years earlier.
Now on sale for €4.5million, it is described as ‘a substantial semidetached, twostorey over garden level home with a splendid back garden’.
The house dates back to 1829, at the end of the Georgian era and boasts five bedrooms, four bathrooms, and even has two kitchens. It also has plenty of workspace in this new era of working-from-home and the garden level is a self-contained flat with its own kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom.
The house even has the original stables, still fitted out with timber stalls.