Adele King, better known as Twink, faces a new battle to save her €1.5 million home from a bank that claims she has failed to maintain monthly repayments on her mortgage.
The 74-year-old Irish entertainer faces, with her ex-husband David Agnew, a bid by Pepper Finance Corporation to repossess Idrone House, where she lives, in Idrone Avenue, Knocklyon, Dublin.
King, also known as Adele Condron-King, and Agnew – who now lives at The Green, Bracken Hill, Kilmessan, Co Meath – have been fighting banks for almost 20 years to keep the bailiffs from the front door of the listed mansion.
A new application by Pepper Finance to take possession of Twink’s home came before Dublin County Registrar Patricia Hickey on Thursday.
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Neither King nor Agnew were at the County Registrar’s court to meet the bank’s application to take back and sell the €1.5 million property, which had been bought in 2002 with the help of a €200,000 loan from Bank of Scotland.
Since then the couple’s original mortgage, along with another €30,000 loan taken out a few years later, has transferred through a number of fellow lenders to Pepper Finance.
Hickey told barrister Mason Napier, counsel for Pepper, that since the new application came before her today for the first time she would adjourn the proceedings until early July to allow King and Agnew to consider their legal position.
Napier, who appeared with Lavelle Partners Solicitors, said the bank was agreeable to an adjournment.
Twink, and her ex, have fought the banks since early in the last decade. The threat to their property had been lifted when a deal for monthly repayments, including a lump-sum payment of €18,000, was agreed several years ago.
Today the bank alleges that repayments on the two loans, both of which are charged against Idrone House, have been reneged on and it is seeking a possession order in respect of the property.
In its proceedings Pepper claimed that, in breach of undertakings attached to the loans, both defendants had failed to make the agreed monthly repayments and, despite demands having been made, had failed to discharge the debt due or to deliver up possession of Idrone House.
The bank stated in its claim that Idrone House was King’s primary residence.
King had earlier claimed that her home, an 18th century Georgian mansion, was a listed building and that she had been reliably informed by The Georgian Society and Dublin City Council that she was only the “current caretaker/custodian of the building”.
She has stated that no one has ever paid her anything towards maintaining the historic building which, she said, required colossal upkeep to preserve it for the State.
At the time she said she was attempting round 90 of the battle to save her home from the banks, and see if the county council would help to keep the house from falling in again as it had been a wreck when she had taken it over.
