French fancy in Blackrock for €9 million

No expense has been spared at Eagle Lodge to make it a show-stopper with echoes of Versailles, writes Orna Mulcahy.

NOT MANY people can boast that their kitchen doubles as a ballroom, but the owner of Eagle Lodge on Sydney Avenue, Blackrock says that hers can take 80 for supper with dancing to follow.

The marble-trimmed kitchen, with its eight dishwashers and twin Agas, is one of the marvels of this 743sq m (8,000sq ft) house, which started out as a modest dower house to long gone Frascati House, and is now a show-stopper property with echoes of Versailles.

The eight-bedroom house has an AMV of €9 million prior to auction through Savills HOK on June 5th.

Set behind a high wall and electronically controlled gates, the wisteria-clad double-fronted house has a rambling layout inside, and some surprises, like the 24ft cellar accessed from a lift in the conservatory, or the superb dressingroom off the main bedroom, which was assembled from the mahogany fittings of Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland.

At one end of the garden there's a hidden cottage, home to a couple who clean and caretake the property, while a full-time gardener is also employed.

Staff will be needed to keep Eagle Lodge in its current pristine state, but working conditions are nothing short of splendid - the utility room, for instance, is decorated in French château-style with floor-to-ceiling hand-painted units, marble worktops and a chandelier - one of 20 throughout the house.

The chandeliers, indeed all the contents are for sale, as the owners plan to move to an entirely different style of house. This is the second time they have put Eagle Lodge on the market. They sold up in 1998 and moved to Howth, but missed the house terribly and so bought it back a year later.

Eagle Lodge has a wonderful layout with a wide central hallway with reception rooms on either side. To the right is a pretty drawingroom with delicate gilded furniture arranged around a fine Georgian fireplace. From the drawingroom you can walk through to a superb palm-filled conservatory.

To the left of the hallway is a music room that leads on to a large diningroom opening directly through to the vast kitchen beyond twin pillars that were salvaged from Frascati House.

The working area of the kitchen is eye-poppingly opulent and fantastically well-organised with its row of undercounter dishwashers, and its vast marble-topped central island which, at the touch of a button, rises up to reveal a bank of hidden appliances - from ice-cream maker to bread mixer. A wall of fridges and freezers has a hidden door that opens through to a large pantry with yet more storage space.

French doors from the kitchen lead out to a patio with an outdoor kitchen, including a restaurant-style grill for cooking steaks. The patio overlooks a very private garden with high hedging behind which is the caretaker's cottage and a gardener's workshop.

Elsewhere on the ground floor is the utility room, guest cloakroom and a snug-like television room with panelled walls and surround sound.

There is also a large study which, as it has no natural light, has been turned into an atmospherically dark room with walls lined in leather bound books that are in fact elaborate storage files.

A self-contained one-bedroom apartment, decorated in five-star hotel room style, has a separate entrance to the side of the house. Upstairs, there are bedrooms at three different levels. The main bedroom suite has a sittingroom at one end where a gilt-framed oil painting over the fireplaces glides up to reveal a wide screen television.

The en suite bathroom has a monumental bath with silver fittings - the fitted dressingroom is as big as many a livingroom. There are three further double bedrooms, all with en suite bathrooms and banks of fitted wardrobes.

One of the bedrooms has a superb bathroom with an antique clawfoot bath and shower arrangement that cost almost €20,000. This room also has access to a gravelled roof terrace perfect for idling away an afternoon.

At the very top of the house are three further attic bedrooms, two of them nursery-sized, one larger, and decorated as a ship's cabin with fitted beds and a beautiful antique swing door with porthole leading to the en suite.

Every corner of this property has been thought through with astonishing attention to detail - even the hand-made rabbit hutch in the front garden is stylish and interesting, it leads down to a man-made rabbit warren so that Thumper can run free.