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Com­puls­ory pur­chase order of house could make it finest in north Dub­lin

A GEORGIAN man­sion in Dub­lin that inspired Bram Stoker’s Drac­ula and is men­tioned in James Joyce’s Ulysses is to be assessed for derel­ic­tion, after lying vacant for almost 30 years.

It comes as local rep­res­ent­at­ives make renewed calls for the com­puls­ory pur­chase order (CPO) of the house, to bring it back into State own­er­ship and make it the ‘jewel in the crown in the north­side’.

RISE AND FALL: Ald­bor­ough House, top, and in its hey­day, below, was built by Edward Strat­ford, above

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Ald­bor­ough House, the second-largest private city town­house in Dub­lin after Lein­ster House, has stood on Port­land Row in the north inner city since the end of the 18th cen­tury.

Across 200 years it served as a res­id­ence, a school, an army bar­racks, and the offices of vari­ous State bod­ies.

But the house has lain vacant since 1999, with only min­imal res­tor­a­tion work car­ried out since it was bought by developers in 2014 – des­pite the own­ers receiv­ing tens of thou­sands in State grants.

Coun­cil­lor Nial Ring asked Dub­lin City Coun­cil (DCC) last month for a com­pre­hens­ive update on the prop­erty, and reques­ted that it be inspec­ted with a view to pla­cing it on the Derel­ict Sites Register. This would sub­ject own­ers to a levy of 7 per cent of the prop­erty’s mar­ket value, with interest of 1.25 per cent per month on unpaid levies, and would allow DCC to take steps to CPO the prop­erty.

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DCC told Cllr Ring that its Derel­ict Sites Office ‘will arrange for an inspec­tion of the prop­erty to be car­ried out and determ­ine [the] next steps under the stat­utory pro­cesses’.

He also asked how much the cur­rent developers – Reli­ance Invest­ments Ltd, an Isle of Man-registered com­pany linked to Pat O’Don­nell – have received in grants to restore the prop­erty, and whether there is any mech­an­ism for claw­ing back grants if a private owner ‘accepts State funds to sta­bil­ise a pro­tec­ted struc­ture but con­tin­ues to leave it vacant and decay­ing’.

DCC did not respond to this aspect, but doc­u­ments seen by the

Irish Mail on Sunday show the developer has received well over €100,000 in fund­ing from both the Depart­ment of Her­it­age and DCC since 2014. The cur­rent own­ers had been gran­ted plan­ning per­mis­sion to develop the premises as offices, but that expired in 2023.

Cllr Ring told the MoS: ‘It’s an iconic build­ing and could be a fab­ulous build­ing, and without being paro­chial, if this were on the south side, something would have been done with it by now.’

The former lord mayor of Dub­lin con­tin­ued: ‘There were sug­ges­tions a few years ago the HSE were going to take it over as a nurs­ing home. There was a sug­ges­tion that the gardaí might use it for a headquar­ters. There were all sorts of sug­ges­tions going around, all of which the loc­als were delighted to hear that something would be done. But unfor­tu­nately noth­ing’s been done.’

Dub­lin Cent­ral TD Marie Sher­lock said the man­sion ‘should be the jewel in the crown in the north side’.

The Labour TD told the MoS: ‘It is one of the most splen­did Geor­gian man­sions in the city, and yet it is this big, hulk­ing, derel­ict pres­ence on Port­land Row. We can’t demol­ish it because it’s a pro­tec­ted struc­ture – nor should any­body want to – so we should be doing something with it.’

‘We can’t let it crumble because of its his­tory and what it could become.’

Archi­tect Rob Cross, who com­pre­hens­ively tracks derel­ic­tion in Ire­land on his web­site, derel­ict­sites.com, vis­ited the site recently.

He told the MoS: ‘This is what hap­pens when the State gives away to the private sec­tor. The State should jump in and CPO it and you could have some cul­ture there, because it is a fine build­ing’.