Not many people have been told that their house is better than Bono’s but, about five years ago, Louis O’Sullivan was the recipient of such a compliment. A roofer, who had come to check up on O’Sullivan’s Victorian home, Palermo in Killiney, remarked that the views were better than those of the neighbour’s. Palermo’s vista takes in much of the home’s one-acre gardens, a large nearby copse of protected eucalyptus trees, before drinking in the Irish Sea and stretching as far as Bray Head. The workman had recently worked on the U2 frontman’s home, which sits just below Palermo, closer to the water.
O’Sullivan, an antiques dealer and founder of the Irish Antique Dealers’ Fair, proudly relays this story as he insists that, even after 45 years of living at Palermo, he still appreciates the panorama.
He and his wife, Fionnuala, bought the 435 sq m, three-storey house for IR£34,000 (€43,000) in 1972, when Killiney was an underappreciated coastal suburb of Dublin. “At that stage everybody was poor, people were struggling and Seán Lemass was doing his best to get the economy going again,” says O’Sullivan.
“Although there wasn’t much happening there was great hope. I thought to myself, ‘Killiney is a beautiful place and there’s no great demand for the houses just yet, so it’s a good time to buy’.”
Palermo was in poor condition. “The electricity had completely broken down. It was cold. The original Victorian marble fireplaces were completely covered up. The whole place had to be renovated from top to bottom but structurally it was sound, as was the roof,” says O’Sullivan.
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The French family that built it in 1848 did well. “It was just after Catholic emancipation when Ireland was developing. The family were coming over to live in Ireland and were aristocratic so they built the coach house and the stables,” he says.
“They even had a place where they kept lion cubs when they came back from safari. They would attach the lion cubs to the back of the coach as they drove in through Dublin city, let the citizens of Dublin see the cubs and then finally bring them up to the zoo.” O’Sullivan points out the black iron bars that penned in the cubs, beside the coach house.
Accommodation in the main house is over three floors. It opens into a large entrance hall with a small, snug room to the right — where the O’Sullivans retire in the evening — and a larger, more formal drawing room to the left that overlooks the sea. The room is bathed in light, as the sun breaks through the clouds and streams in through the bay windows.
O’Sullivan’s house is, as you would expect, full of antiques that he has found throughout the years, including fine pieces from all over the world — a tallboy from Spain, 17th-century chairs from France and a giant tapestry bought at one of the first antiques fairs he held; it came from one of the old Irish houses.
He says he loved filling the rooms with interesting items. “It was a lovely experience. I remember discussing antiques with Jack Lynch years ago, when he was the minister for finance,” says O’Sullivan. “The country was losing all the wonderful furniture that was made in Ireland and we wondered how we could preserve it here.” The launch of the Irish Antique Dealers’ Fair went some way to creating an appreciation among Irish people for local antiques.
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His favourite is a table and chairs from the tenor John McCormack’s home in New York, which sits in the dining room, another fine space with high ceilings and three sash windows overlooking the sea.
“We had lovely meals sitting around that table. I once put on a show with Frank Patterson in honour of McCormack. It was a great success and on the night we came back here had a lovely party sitting around his table,” he says.
The family of Nathaniel Hone, the painter, also lived in Palermo for more than 20 years. Their time at the property is marked by the letter H cut into the weathervane on the roof of the coach house.
“We’ve had all sorts of people staying here including the English ballet dancers Sir Anton Dolin and John Gilpin — I was involved in a ballet company,” says O’Sullivan. “We had lots of people who were interested in the arts because I was deeply involved in theatre. We also had many guests from England to talk about Irish antiques.”
The O’Sullivans would have had plenty of space to accommodate them. The four bedrooms on the first floor are large. They turned the dressing room beside the main bedroom into an en suite bathroom. The basement is also sizeable, with a den that was once used by the couple’s four children, a study, storage rooms and a wine cellar.
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“We used all the house, all the time. In the olden days, a lot of people had ‘the good room’ but we made the best of every single room,” he says.
Now that the children are adults with families of their own, the house feels empty, so the couple have bought a site beside the beach in Sutton where they plan to build. Palermo went on the market for €4m in March 2016, but in recent weeks, they’ve changed agents to Sherry FitzGerald, which is marketing it at €3.5m.
For your money, you’ll get the main house, a one-bedroom mews with separate access to Killiney Hill Road, an acre of manicured gardens — and perhaps even better views than Bono’s.