£2.5m for Dalkey house with sea view but needing revamp

Large sites with sea views are extremely rare in Dalkey, hence the asking price of £2.5 million for Mount Alverno, a large period house needing total refurbishment but with almost an acre of garden overlooking the sea at Nerano Road. Agent Eoin Deering, who is offering Mount Alverno for sale by private treaty, expects that new owners will either demolish the house or extend and rebuild to a radical degree.

Mount Alverno is part of an enclave of interesting period houses set high on Beacon Hill, where neighbours include Eddie Irvine and Van Morrison. The principal house is Monte Alverno, a large Victorian house once owned by socialite Renata Coleman, which shares its entrance on Sorrento Road with Eddie Irvine's Kilross Cottage, and with Mount Alverno, which has right of way over its driveway. Mount Alverno and Monte Alverno also share an all-weather tennis court set between the two houses.

Hidden from the road, Mount Alverno is an exceptionally private property, so much so that most people don't know it is even there, according to Eoin Deering. It has its own private entrance via a narrow laneway off Nerano Road that ends in a gravelled forecourt with detached garage.

From here it is a few steps walk to the house, past the entrance to Killross House, an impressive Victorian pile owned by Van Morrison but not lived in at present. Mount Alverno can also be accessed through Monte Alverno's gates on Sorrento Road.

The house can be entered through the front garden, or at the back where there is a separate entrance to the two-storey section. The gardens all around the house look as though they were beautiful once, but are now seriously overgrown.

There are large areas of rockery garden, the foundations of an old summer house, and a walled area of grass that may once have been a croquet lawn with a semicircle of raised stone seats.

In front of the house is the remains of a formal garden and a large south-facing patio. The view sweeps down over the roofs of the houses below to the sea, past the figure of a sailor perched high on a rock in a neighbouring garden.

The house itself has been given a coat of paint throughout to freshen it up but it is obvious that there is a good deal of work to be done. It is a quirky house with a couple of large reception rooms, a series of old sculleries and store rooms and one particularly nice big bedroom with a window framing a superb view of the Muglins.

The two-storey extension has three rooms downstairs - all windows set high in the walls, and two wonderfully bright rooms upstairs with a bathroom in between. There are few features of note, apart from a nicely curved staircase and a fine bay window in the main bedroom with its original shutters.

The sheer amount of space at Mount Alverno, as well as the view, should ensure it a premium price, when it is sold later this summer.