Despite a number of new developments over the past few decades, the coastal village of Blackrock in Co Louth still retains its old-world charm.
Locals and tourists alike have for generations enjoyed the seaside location, 5km from Dundalk, with its promenade and silver strand. It appears that the area has always had a cosmopolitan allure, and today it’s one of the most popular spots in which the area’s well-heeled reside.
Ivy House is an old coaching inn dating back to Georgian times and a photograph hanging in one of its reception rooms shows the house in all its glory back in 1830.
It was last purchased in 2001.
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“I found it quite by accident. I was meeting someone and pulled into the church car park next-door but I fell in love with the place and bought it,” says the owner, who ran the property as a nine-bedroom B&B for a number of years.
Lying directly opposite a sandy beach in a small terrace of four houses, Ivy House is the only one with a third floor. Views from the first floor are the best – due to their elevation and size of the windows – and take in the Cooley Mountains and the dramatic coastline of Dundalk Bay.
As it currently stands there are five bedrooms (three of which are en suite) on the top floor, with four en suite bedrooms on the first floor. Depending on whether the property is purchased as a business or indeed as a 315sq m (3,396sq ft) private house, will dictate the future use of these rooms.
As the middle floor has such lovely views it might be better suited as a piano nobile with gracious reception rooms.
At hall level are four reception rooms in the form of a formal diningroom, a drawingroom, a sittingroom and a livingroom that flank each side of the double-fronted house. To the rear is an eat-in kitchen and utility.
The property, with a D2 Ber, has two terraces to the rear, the second of which has superb views, and while it does not have a garden, the beach is just across the road.
“I had a moment in time where I thought it would make a lovely yoga retreat with the beach across the road, where people do yoga in the evenings. But circumstances have changed and I am now selling up,” says the owner, who has placed her lovely Georgian house on the market through Sherry FitzGerald Carroll, seeking €750,000.
