Laurene Fitzpatrick gave this Killiney, Co Dublin, abode a sustainable upgrade inside and outside — it is now on the market for €525,000 Laurene Fitzpatrick in the garden. Photo: Bryan Meade Exterior of the circa 440sq ft granite built cottage on Glenalua Road The living room at Stone Cottage Laurene Fitzpatrick drew this map of the Boyne. Photo: Bryan Meade One of the bedrooms — the second is currently in use as a home office The living room has stripped-back stone walls and is hung with a number of Fitzpatrick’s own paintings Entrance hallway The garden 'I realigned the chimney and I use a very sustainable source of kiln-dried, low moisture timber in the stove,' says Laurene Fitzpatrick Stone Cottage, 6A Glenalua Road, Killiney, Co Dublin Asking price: €525,000 Agent: Sherry FitzGerald Dalkey (01) 275 1000 Laurene Fitzpatrick lives a few paces away from U2’s Bono but she is not too fussed about that.
For her, the real celebrities in the neighbourhood are the creatures of the air and the beasts of the earth. Fitzpatrick lives in a circa 440sq ft granite built cottage on Glenalua Road, just paces away from the rock star’s rather more capacious Temple Hill home. Since moving there around a decade ago, she has turned the barren rock garden at the tiny cottage into a rock-star pad for insects and birds, chipping away at the granite and introducing top soil on which to grow flowers and vegetables.
Laurene Fitzpatrick drew this map of the Boyne. Photo: Bryan Meade “Yeah, it is built from granite, on granite,” she says. “There were three small quarries there back in the day, and some of the granite was used locally in homes.
I got my pickaxe, and I took everything out from the front, and I dug holes into the soft granite that was underneath the crazy paving, because, you know, having been enclosed there for 40 years the rock had become quite soft. “And I brought in good topsoil and basically planted into that. Anywhere that I don't have soil, I have pots.
Really the planting is for nature, to help biodiversity, because you have all these beautiful patches of nature, like Dalkey Hill, Killiney Hill, then you have all these little roads running off them, and all these laneways connecting into other patches. These are sanctuaries and habitat for nature as it travels along through these spaces.” Exterior of the circa 440sq ft granite built cottage on Glenalua Road As for her own habitat, Fitzpatrick has not been shy about getting stuck into any work that needed to be done.
Though it came in reasonable condition, thanks to a builder who had been a previous owner, Stone Cottage still needed a good deal of work and Fitzpatrick tried to be as respectful to the integrity and history of the building as possible. So basically, I would have stripped the cottage right back, but at the same time tried to retain what I could and also keep environmental concerns to the fore “So basically, I would have stripped the cottage right back, but at the same time tried to retain what I could and also keep environmental concerns to the fore. So where the wood burning stove is now, for example, I took out the old fireplace because it would be just like having an open window.
“I realigned the chimney and I use a very sustainable source of kiln-dried, low moisture timber in the stove. I took out the old gas boiler that was here, as well as the radiators.” One of the bedrooms — the second is currently in use as a home office Fitzpatrick sought counsel from friends who are architects and engineers and ultimately felt the best way to help maintain a good living temperature internally was to think back to the old cottages and the way they would always have a fire always going at either end.
“They would retain a certain temperature in the cottage that would actually stop water ingress through the lime mortar,” Fitzpatrick says. “You’d have a balance of the heat in the house, which really benefits old stone buildings like this. 'I realigned the chimney and I use a very sustainable source of kiln-dried, low moisture timber in the stove,' says Laurene Fitzpatrick “So the Aga is gas-run and in the summer, I turn it right down, but I leave it alone and it just retains this lovely temperature with the old stone walls and the floor.
I dry my clothes on the Aga and in the summer, basically you’re cooking in a different way, so I have a good oven, and an induction hob.” Fitzpatrick reroofed, rewired and re-plumbed. She installed new rooflights at the back of the house and high-quality reproduction sash windows from Kells Windows in the front.
The same company also made the front door. Traditional stone-mason Terence O’Flaherty re-pointed old chimneys using lime mortar. The living room has stripped-back stone walls and is hung with a number of Fitzpatrick’s own paintings Fitzpatrick retained everything she possibly could, including the timber ceiling in the living room and the existing internal doors, as well as the timber flooring, which may or may not be original and which is now painted white.
The tiled floor in the kitchen was also there when Fitzpatrick bought the house but she thinks this may be a late 20th-century addition. The cottage has two bedrooms, one of which is currently in use as a home office. There is one bathroom, a living/dining room and a kitchen, as well as an entrance hallway.
The living room has stripped-back stone walls and is hung with a number of Fitzpatrick’s own paintings. The garden “I love painting,’ she says. “I love drawing.
Part of studying landscape architecture is to look and observe, yes, so I do paint. There's something about nature that makes me want to draw and look carefully. "I suppose, with landscape architecture you’d be going through a lot of projects where you you’re looking, they really encourage you to study and look and draw, because so much stuff is done on computers now and using Google Earth.
” Stone Cottage, Fitzpatrick reckons, dates from 1833. It is part of a pair that were originally thought to be a Quaker school, with boys in one side and girls in the other. She has studied the local history in depth, even helping a neighbour, who was a folklorist, to collect stories from locals who are part of families that go back generations in an area which did not always have the uber-affluent image it does now.
“I suppose, really, when people began to move out of Dublin to the big old houses out here it really created a whole different atmosphere. Before that, there would have been a lot of poverty out here, with small fishing communities and people living off their goats and their sheep. Entrance hallway “But then, when the area began to become gentrified with these big houses, there was great demand for milk and butter and cream and cheese and even ice cream.
So the dairies began to develop in Killiney village, when people who had come up from Wicklow to settle and brought up their cattle, saw the opportunity to get into that business. There were three dairies in this area back in the early 1800s.” Later on, she discovered, Stone Cottage had been home to Winnifred Dowd who lived there into her 90s.
Winnifred’s father, Peter, owned the Killiney Hill dairy. For her own part, Fitzpatrick has five grown boys who have their own growing families. She would like to move to a place that has an extra bedroom for visiting grandchildren and says her dream is to have a bit more space for growing vegetables and other planting, and to teach her grandchildren about growing.
Stone Cottage is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald with an asking price of €525,000. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.
