British entrepreneur and horse racing fanatic Peter Savill has emerged as the purchaser of Springfield House, a superb Georgian house and 160-acre stud farm close to Brittas Bay, in Co Wicklow.
He is believed to be paying about £2.5 million for the house and stud, which belongs to the Mullion family. Mr Savill, who is chairman of the British Horse Racing board, made his fortune from in-flight magazines.
The property sensation of the year was undoubtedly Sorrento House, which sold for £5.9 million under the hammer in June. The underbidder, Loclann Quinn, was pipped to the post by a bidder variously identified in the international press as Jack Nicholson, George Michael and Michael Jackson. The identity of the new owner was finally revealed in The Irish Times - Terry Coleman, a fifty-something businessman, orginally from Dublin, who has made a fortune in car alarms in the UK. Two weeks after the sale of Sorrento House, a second house on Sorrento Terrace was auctioned. It was snapped up for around £1.8 million by film maker Neil Jordan, who lives next door. It is believed that he plans to knock the two houses together. Close by, film maker Jim Sheridan paid around £1.1 million for Martha's Vineyard, a two-storey house overhanging the water at Coliemore Harbour.
Ronan McNamee, the cofounder of the bakery group Cuisine de France, celebrated the sale of the company for £51 million by buying Atherstone, an impressive Victorian detached house on Temple Road in Dartry for £2.2 million. The price set a new record for Dublin 6. The 45-year-old former racing driver bought the house from Cormac O'Connell of the O'Connell chain of pharmacies in Dublin. Speculation still surrounds the new owner of 22 Ailesbury Road, the former Japanese embassy, which made a staggering £2.95 million. The detached house, which needs complete refurbishment, may have been bought for development purposes.
Senator Shane Ross quietly sold his house, Askfield, a large period house on Dublin Road, Bray, Co Wicklow, to Chris Horn, of Iona Technology, for a price believed to be over £2 million. The property includes six acres of land. The former chief executive of the Irish Permanent, Dr Edmund Farrell, sold his home, Grassmere, on Westminster Road, Foxrock, for a price thought to be around £2 million. The most expensive house sold in north Dublin this year was Lissadell, a modern mansion in Portmarnock that fetched in excess of £1.6 million after auction. It is thought to have been bought by a hotelier. Developer Frank Woods set a new record on Herbert Park, Ballsbridge, when he paid £1.56 million for 36 Herbert Park earlier this year. The large Edwardian detached house adjoining the park needed extensive refurbishment.
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