0:00

to the left -wing rugby podcast with me, Will

0:02

Slattery and Luke Fitzgerald, where you can hear

0:04

things like this. And in terms of nine,

0:06

outside of Gibson Park, I don't think there's

0:08

a nailed on number nine. Like, there's some

0:10

other good candidates, Alex Mitchell, maybe

0:12

Thomas Williams from Wales, Ben White. Well, in case he

0:14

misses Six Nations, if he is another really good

0:16

game this weekend, then once you win, then I think

0:18

he might be able to force lead. I think

0:20

that's definitely a debate. I agree with that. That's certainly

0:22

offered by... And he's definitely in there. He would

0:24

have been playing behind Gibson Park if he wasn't injured

0:26

during Six Nations. I'm pretty sure of that. Spotify,

0:30

Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. On

0:34

this week's Big Tech Show, we talked

0:36

to Adam Dalton, the young entrepreneur who

0:38

sold the educational tech business he started

0:40

in school for millions and is now

0:42

building another talked about startup. The lifestyle

0:44

was work like a dog, like really,

0:46

really growing sales, calls, product development, everything.

0:48

And then on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday,

0:50

have a few drinks and you'd be

0:53

drinking at home. You couldn't go anywhere.

0:55

But then as a consequence of just

0:57

being so focused on work, there was

0:59

literally no exercise. The Big Tech Show,

1:01

available on all podcast platforms. On

1:04

the latest episode of Real Health at Me, Carl

1:06

Henry, I'm delighted to be joined by psychologist Owen

1:08

O 'Kane, telling us all that we're addicted to our

1:11

anxiety and how to improve it. If you see

1:13

anxiety as an enemy, that's exactly what it feels

1:15

like. Whereas you see it as, okay, this is

1:17

a part of me that is real and it's

1:19

tangible. It's not like treating a kidney or a

1:21

lung. You know, anxiety is much more nuanced than

1:23

that. It's about, you know, get to know the

1:25

part of yourself, get to know the thoughts, get

1:27

to know the behaviours that get in the way,

1:29

get to know the behaviours that actually help you

1:31

move forward. As ever, it's available at all podcast

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platforms. This

1:36

is an Irish independent podcast.

1:42

It's been called Ireland's Millionaire's

1:44

Road. Before the economic crash

1:46

of 2007, it was one

1:48

of the most expensive streets

1:51

in the entire world, outpricing

1:53

addresses in Beverly Hills and

1:55

Monte Carlo. And it'll

1:57

still cost you a pretty penny if you

1:59

land on on the monopoly board. Welcome

2:02

to Shrewsbury Road. This

2:04

is a bit like if you won the lottery, what would

2:07

you do with your house? Behind these high walls

2:09

and manicured hedges, you'll find more

2:11

than just mansions, pink

2:13

private cinemas, Wine

2:15

sellers stocked with the finest vintages

2:17

and swimming pools that wouldn't be out

2:19

of place in a five -star hotel.

2:22

Most of the owners of these houses

2:24

would have extensive staff, including gardeners, and

2:26

they keep the place absolutely spruce. But

2:28

beyond the price tags and the property

2:30

deals, what does Shrewsbury Road

2:33

really tell us about wealth in

2:35

Ireland today? It's a good barometer of

2:37

Irish wealth at any one time. Every

2:39

city in the world has an enclave like

2:41

this. I'm Ellen Coyne and today

2:43

on the Indo Daily I'm joined by

2:45

John Burns, Deputy Business Editor with Media

2:47

House Ireland to look through the

2:49

keyholes of the social elite and to

2:52

take us on a whistle -stop tour of

2:54

Ireland's most prestigious street. So,

2:59

John, for plain non

3:01

-millionaires like myself, most

3:03

of us would only know Shrewsbury Road

3:05

as the really expensive spot on the monopoly

3:07

board, but it's one of the most

3:09

famous, one of the most expensive roads in

3:11

Ireland, and you've done a deep dive

3:14

on the people behind the front doors along

3:16

this illustrious road. I was wondering if

3:18

we could start maybe by you telling us

3:20

a little bit about the history of

3:22

this leafy Dublin 4 address. Sure. So

3:24

Shoesbury Road was originally named to

3:26

honour the marriage of the 13th Earl

3:28

of Pembroke, which is a name

3:30

that will be very familiar to people in

3:32

Dublin, because they were the original landowners in

3:34

Bodd's Bridge. And this Earl

3:36

married Lady Gertrude Talbot in 1874. And she

3:38

was the cousin of the Earl of

3:41

Shoesbury, which is where the road got

3:43

its name from. Most of

3:45

the houses there were built in

3:47

the first decade of the 20th century.

3:49

You can still see some plaques outside,

3:51

saying built in 1902 or 1905. But

3:54

from the very early days,

3:56

it became a place where the

3:58

well -to -do were living. But

4:00

it's interesting to go back to

4:03

the senses of 1911, which is the

4:05

first real register we have of

4:07

who was living there. And you basically

4:09

had business people living side by

4:11

side with army colonels. It's always been

4:13

a very interesting reflection of Irish

4:15

society as to who has the money

4:17

and who can afford to live

4:19

on this premier residential street. So

4:21

some people who live in Dublin might have

4:23

had reason to go up and down Trusby

4:25

Road, maybe just out of noziness. For people

4:27

who haven't seen it, but who know their

4:29

address, could you kind of describe what it's

4:31

like? Yeah, so it's

4:33

a very short road. When

4:36

I was doing the research for the piece

4:38

that I've done in Trusby Road, I started

4:40

at the Marion Roadside, so your back is

4:42

to the IRC, and all the

4:44

odd numbered houses are then on your left, and

4:46

all the even numbered houses are on your

4:48

right. And what did sort of confuse me for

4:50

a while was that the odd numbers stop

4:52

at 23, but the even numbers go up

4:54

to 30. The other interesting

4:56

thing is that some of the

4:58

sites are so big that people have

5:00

built extra houses onto them. So

5:02

you have a 17, but you also

5:04

have a 17A. And on

5:06

the old Chester Beattie site, which was

5:08

number 20, you have a 20A and

5:10

a 20B, but you also have a

5:12

set of seven very big posh houses,

5:14

although not at the same level as

5:16

everybody else. that were designed

5:19

by Blockham and Maher and sold in

5:21

about 2022. These seven

5:23

houses have impressive layouts for city

5:25

living and entertaining and each house

5:27

has space for a study, gym,

5:29

cinema room and a private lift. Let's

5:31

go take a look. But

5:34

one notable factor of the street is

5:36

how clean it is. I was asking people

5:38

about this. And one of the people

5:40

I talked to was Councillor Mannix Flynn, and

5:43

Mannix would admit he doesn't get many votes on

5:45

Shrewsbury Road, but he does like walking up and

5:47

down. And I said to

5:49

him, like, why is the place so certainly in a

5:51

tidy Mannix? And he pointed out that it's part of the

5:53

embassy belt. So there's a there's

5:55

a couple of red ambassador residences on

5:57

the road at the moment, but various

5:59

embassies have come and gone from there.

6:01

So, you know, the people will be

6:04

keeping a tight eye on. security.

6:07

Of course, the other factor is that

6:09

most of the owners of these houses

6:11

would have extensive staff, including gardeners, and

6:13

they keep the place absolutely spruce. So

6:15

it's a very enjoyable process to walk

6:17

from one end of the row to

6:19

the other, I must say. I can

6:21

imagine. And I was having a nose

6:23

on Google Maps earlier, and it's like

6:25

every house looks like the house from

6:27

Home Alone, basically. These are like big,

6:29

gigantic mansions with a lot of gorgeous

6:31

red brick. I know there's probably

6:33

no typical Shrewsbury Road mansion, but what

6:35

kind of facilities would you typically have

6:37

in these houses? Yeah,

6:39

again, I think, and this shows how

6:41

society moves on, like what was regarded

6:43

as really important by people say

6:45

in the 50s and 60s was having an absolutely massive

6:47

garden with a team of maybe five or six garters

6:49

and you'd have it lovely and you'd have picnics on

6:51

the lawn and so on. So when the

6:53

houses changed hands from the 90s onwards, the gardens

6:56

became much smaller to the point where houses were

6:58

even built on them. But the

7:00

standard additions to these houses that

7:02

I found over and over again were,

7:04

first of all, swimming pools, which

7:06

tend to be indoors for obvious climactic

7:08

reasons. They're usually in the basement. Also

7:12

in the basement, usually get a cinema. This

7:14

is a bit like if you won the lottery. What would you do

7:16

with your house? I would add a swimming pool, I would add a

7:18

cinema. Tennis courts are

7:20

also extremely popular. There

7:22

are at least a half a dozen of them

7:24

on that road. You get some

7:26

fairly big libraries. I managed to spot

7:29

one as I passed the house. Absolutely

7:31

luscious looking library. I won't give you

7:33

the number. And wine cellars

7:35

then are the other standard bit of kit

7:37

that you need when you build a

7:39

house of the sort. And I

7:41

suppose in the piece that

7:43

you've done on the road,

7:45

like it became a reluctant

7:47

residential star of the Celtic

7:49

Tiger. You mentioned like

7:51

in the early 1900s, you would

7:53

have had like, you know,

7:55

middle class professionals. as the

7:57

Celtic Tiger happened, a lot of

7:59

property developers would have had addresses on

8:01

Shrewsbury Road. And there was one

8:04

house called Walford. I think all the

8:06

houses have kind of fancy names

8:08

instead of just numbers. It sold for

8:10

€58 million in 2005, would you

8:12

think at the time and maybe still

8:14

now was the most expensive Irish

8:16

house ever sold? It

8:19

still is. And that

8:21

kind of became like a reluctant

8:23

emblem for the Celtic Tiger

8:25

because the house kind of fell into

8:27

disrepair in the years after that, the people who bought

8:29

it never moved in. That's right. So

8:31

just going back to the 1990s, when

8:33

property prices started to take off, obviously

8:36

the values on Shrewsbury Road really shot

8:38

up. And it was at that time

8:40

that a lot of the residents decided this is

8:42

a great time to cash in, so they went

8:44

up for sale. Or there was a generational change,

8:47

you know, the people who had bought houses there in

8:49

the 20s and 30s, let's say. you

8:51

know, the families were moving on. So

8:54

interesting to see who was living there in

8:56

the 90s. There were, as you say,

8:58

an awful lot of professional people. There were

9:00

judges, there were barsters, there was a

9:02

cardiologist, but they didn't sell their

9:04

houses to those kind of people. So

9:07

the property developer certainly moved in in

9:09

the late 90s and about four or

9:11

five. very well known names were there. So

9:13

you had Sean Dunn, for example,

9:15

Larry O'Mahony was in number seven, Paddy

9:17

Kelly, another famous builder was in

9:19

15A. And the sale that

9:21

you referred to was Walford, which is

9:24

number 24. And as you

9:26

say, that sold for the ludicrous

9:28

price of 56 million euros in 2005.

9:30

To be fair to Sean Dunn and

9:32

his wife Gail, who are the reputed

9:35

owners of it, there were several other

9:37

bidders. There was at least two

9:39

people on the road itself who tried to

9:41

buy it. So the price was driven up

9:43

on Sean Dunn. It wasn't that he simply

9:45

just threw this money down himself. But yeah,

9:47

see, he never got to move in. They

9:50

made an attempt to knock it down and

9:52

build something else. It's a huge site. I

9:54

mean, even by the standards of Shoots To

9:56

Be Road, it's massive. It's something like 1 .8

9:58

acres. When they tried to

10:00

do something, many of the other residents

10:02

objected to it. So it was a

10:04

very sorry site by the time that

10:07

German Desmond bought it. some years later

10:09

and he finally did knock it down

10:11

and and build what most people would

10:13

say is an absolutely fabulous residence. It

10:15

really was a very good job. The

10:18

interesting thing is it's not called Walford

10:20

anymore. Now it's called Anamkara, which is the

10:22

only Irish language name that I found

10:24

on the road. That's interesting. And I guess

10:26

I'm just interested there when you're talking

10:28

about how all the property developers started to

10:30

move in in the 90s. From your

10:32

research, would it be fair to kind of

10:34

use Shrewsbury Road as a metric for

10:37

who is doing well in Ireland at any

10:39

one time? Absolutely. And

10:41

after the property developers had

10:43

to sell up in the early

10:45

Norways, particularly, the people who

10:48

tended to buy there were the

10:50

aviation tycoons. So you

10:52

had Don Slattery, who's now in 28.

10:54

He's with the Avalon company. Gary

10:56

Bork is in six. Dez McEvady, brother of Eulik

10:58

is in 13. Angus Kelly is

11:00

in five and in seven. And

11:02

Paul Coulson of Ardize is also

11:04

a person living on the road. So

11:06

you still have the old money

11:08

there, some old money. And some of

11:10

the houses haven't changed hands at

11:12

all. But it is a very good

11:14

parameter of where Ireland's wealth is

11:16

at at a particular time. You mentioned

11:18

number five and number seven there.

11:20

And people might have seen pictures of

11:22

those houses in the news recently

11:24

because there is a plan to kind

11:26

of turn those two houses into

11:28

like a super. dwelling

11:31

and there is a little bit of like a

11:33

planning process going on at the moment, is

11:35

that correct? That is correct. So

11:37

as you walk down Shrewsbury Road,

11:39

on the east side, numbers

11:41

one and three are semi -detached properties,

11:43

which are currently being rented. And

11:45

the New Zealand ambassador has a residence

11:47

in number one. And the

11:49

next two, numbers five and seven, are

11:51

also semi -detached properties. And they are now

11:53

both owned by Engus Kelly of Aircap

11:55

and his wife, Deirdre O'Malley. They

11:58

bought number five some years ago, and

12:00

they bought number seven more recently. And they've

12:02

paid a total of 11 .5 million euros

12:04

for the pair. However, they've

12:06

now put in a planning

12:08

application to partially knock both

12:10

of these down and create

12:12

one massive five -bedroom, three -story,

12:14

over -basement residence as you do.

12:18

In fairness, I mean, I do say

12:20

in the piece, I don't think five

12:22

and seven are the most architecturally spectacular

12:24

houses on the street. And

12:26

in fact, one of their neighbours has put

12:28

in a... to Dublin City Council saying that

12:30

this is a very good proposal and that

12:32

they fully back it. There have been spots

12:34

between neighbours on Shrewsby Road in the past

12:36

when people tried to make changes but I

12:39

have the feeling that this one is going

12:41

to go through and actually even Mannix Flynn

12:43

told me he's in favour of it. Really?

12:45

So you think that this would be something

12:47

that would cause a lot of upset, but

12:49

it sounds like people would be in favour

12:51

of it if it made the road look

12:53

even fancier, basically. That's it. So Patrick Dorn

12:56

in number 11, who has done a similar

12:58

job on his own house, in the submission

13:00

he made to Dublin City Council, which did

13:02

raise eyebrows last week, he said that the

13:04

proposal will further enhance the architectural quality of

13:06

this significant road. And I do

13:08

mention that there was a similar proposal

13:10

back in 2009 when Nylo Farrell

13:12

of Black Tie, also a judge on

13:14

Dragon's Den. We were you? That's

13:16

a Dragon's Den before. On

13:19

a curtain thing. The curtain goes, yes. And

13:21

you're back? Yes. For more money. New

13:23

products. Got your very determined that. We didn't get

13:25

the money the last time, so. Yeah, all right. He

13:28

wanted to knock down number 28

13:30

and do something similar. But

13:32

David McCann, who lives in

13:34

number 26, sent an

13:36

absolutely fascinating... submission to onboard

13:39

Planola. And he basically

13:41

said, look, Shrewsbury Road is

13:43

not a place for ostentatious

13:45

braggadocio. Okay,

13:47

I thought ostentatious braggadocio was the reason people bought

13:49

mansions on Shrewsbury Road. But what do I

13:51

know? I don't have the bank account to have

13:53

an interest in that. You

13:58

mentioned that obviously there have been some

14:00

disputes before on this road, and you mentioned

14:02

some there. Houses one and

14:04

three, which as you said, were the

14:06

only other two semi -detached, apart from five

14:08

and seven. They had been the subject

14:10

of a high court dispute as well. That's

14:12

right. So these two houses

14:14

are commonly referred to as being

14:16

owned by Derek Quinlan. financier

14:19

in the naughties that he owned one

14:21

and three but I was doing some

14:24

research on the various ownership positions and

14:26

I'm told that the actual position was

14:28

a little bit more complicated and we

14:30

do know that they were caught up

14:32

in a legal dispute in the High

14:34

Court in 2006. Nama did sell the

14:36

two as a pair for 5 .5

14:38

million in 2012 which was two million

14:40

less than the original asking price but

14:42

it was quite interesting after the financial

14:44

crash prices on Shrewsbury Road absolutely plummeted.

14:46

Now, in 2007, it was ranked as

14:48

the sixth most expensive residential street in

14:50

the world, which was ahead of places

14:52

like Monaco and California and so on. That

14:55

ranking was certainly inflated

14:57

by the 56 million euros that

14:59

Shondon paid for Wallford. Even

15:01

apart from that, it's simply not

15:03

at that level now. So

15:06

as you say, this one and three

15:08

were bought by an overseas investor as

15:10

by Telet and the current tenant number

15:12

one is the New Zealand ambassador. One

15:14

interesting point, I was talking to Simon

15:16

Ensar of Sherry Fitzgerald, who holds the

15:18

record for selling more houses on the

15:20

road than anybody else in the real

15:22

estate business. He told me

15:24

he sold eight that I can remember.

15:26

Oh my God. Now, I've seen

15:29

references to him selling nine, but he's clearly

15:31

forgotten selling one of them. But he told

15:33

me that he sold one and three

15:35

twice. It's just minutes away from

15:37

the air and flow of the

15:39

Irish sea. The

15:41

bustle of Ball's Bridge, with

15:43

its Michelin -recommended restaurants and

15:45

bars. The tranquility of

15:48

Herbert Park. The

15:50

clean air and solitude of the

15:52

Wicklow Hills. the roar

15:54

of the matchday crowd. And

15:57

all, just 25 minutes

15:59

from Dublin International Airport. That

16:02

was actually going to be my next

16:04

question because the address is so famous. When

16:06

people get into these houses, even though

16:08

they might be property developers and turning them

16:10

over, do they tend to hold

16:12

onto them for a very long time

16:14

or would these addresses often come up to

16:16

buy? They come up

16:18

pretty regularly actually. There are

16:20

very few people living on

16:22

Shrewsbury Road now who were living

16:24

there in the 1990s. I

16:26

went to Tom's directory, that great

16:28

old Bible of property owners

16:31

in Dublin. The last one was

16:33

produced in 2012. And

16:35

I think about half the houses have

16:37

even changed towns since then. So there's

16:39

a constant flip as fortunes come and

16:41

go. The thing is, once you

16:43

buy a house there, you quite often will

16:45

have to spend the same again, just even doing

16:47

it up. But one auctioneer told me it's

16:49

called a generational upgrade. Okay,

16:51

again, something I'm not rich enough to know.

16:54

Well, think we all do them, but probably

16:56

have more modest levels. a smaller scale, yeah.

17:02

When one of these houses does come

17:04

up for sale and it's bought journalists

17:06

like you would probably be keeping a

17:08

close eye on it There's an interesting

17:10

yarn in your story where somebody who

17:13

I don't know Would we say it

17:15

was an honest mistake or a strategic

17:17

mistake where the property ended up being

17:19

misspelled on the property register? So it

17:21

was a sale that actually went Under

17:23

the radar for a little bit of

17:25

time. Yeah, so I think you're referring

17:27

here to number nine, which is called

17:30

lissadelle and that originally sold for a

17:32

very reasonable 6 million in 2012. It

17:34

was sold by the slister Ann Neary, and

17:36

it was bought by an investment banker called

17:39

Martin Shields, who did the usual thing of tripling

17:41

it in size, adding the swimming

17:43

pool, the staff accommodation, the wine cellar,

17:45

etc. But he sold

17:47

it in 2021 for 13 .25

17:49

million to Pat Crane, who

17:51

is the chief executive of the

17:54

Marlis property group. But that transaction did

17:56

go under the radar for a

17:58

while because nobody could see it on

18:00

the property price register. So they're

18:03

all not keen to find out the

18:05

price of it. And finally, it

18:07

was discovered that it had been registered

18:09

on the property price register as

18:11

Ivarani Bohr Shrewsbury. But

18:13

the or was missing from the word

18:15

Ivar and the or was missing

18:17

from the word Bohr. Now, to paraphrase

18:19

Oscar Wilde, to lose one letter

18:22

might be regarded as misfortunate, but to

18:24

lose two starts to look a

18:26

little bit more than a coincidence. I

18:29

should give the credit on

18:31

this for spotting this to the

18:33

brilliantly named Simon Twist from

18:35

Black Rock. who wrote a letter

18:37

to the Irish Times back in 2021,

18:39

having made this spot on the property price

18:41

register. So thank you, Simon, for doing

18:43

our donkey work for us. I think that's

18:45

so funny because what little I know

18:48

about multimillionaires is that they do like their

18:50

privacy. And I wonder, are people ever

18:52

put off buying on Shrewsbury Road because there's

18:54

so much attention and there's so much

18:56

focus on it and because people do want

18:58

to know the price that you paid?

19:00

Wouldn't somebody that wealthy kind of want a

19:02

more discreet address? Some

19:04

do and some don't. There are 31

19:06

houses, I think, on Shrewsbury Road,

19:08

and having researched this for a few

19:11

weeks, I can tell you who

19:13

owns about 27 of them. Now,

19:15

some of them are trust companies, but again,

19:17

you can see who the directors are there.

19:20

Now, for example, when German Desmond was doing

19:22

the job at number 24, he said

19:24

quite openly in the planning application that he

19:26

intended this as his private residence. So,

19:29

you know, he was quite happy to put

19:31

that on the public record. I

19:33

don't think people are showing off. They may

19:35

just really put it on the record. It'll

19:37

stop journalists nosing around and acquiring into everything.

19:40

The one interesting house though that

19:42

I did want to mention as

19:44

well is the Finland Embassy. Now, this

19:47

house was built in

19:49

1912. It's number 17. I

19:51

was bought by the Finnish government in

19:53

1989 from a judge, or from the family

19:55

a judge, Seamus Egan. But

19:57

I was just thinking as I walked down seeing the

19:59

Finnish flag and the EU flag fluttering outside, if

20:02

Finland ever gets the equivalent of

20:04

Elon Musk's dog, I

20:06

wonder will the Finnish taxpayers go, why on

20:08

earth is our ambassador in Dublin living

20:10

in a 10 million euro house? Good question.

20:12

I imagine the question we'd probably be

20:14

asking if an Irish embassy was in whatever

20:16

the European equivalent of Shrewsbury Road is. And

20:19

I don't know, you know, what the profile of

20:21

our listenership is, but we should probably mention, John,

20:23

that there are two properties. Entrees

20:25

we wrote for sale at the

20:27

moment, number 19 and number 23. What

20:30

do we know about them if we

20:32

have anyone who's lucky enough to be

20:34

in the market for them? Yes. So

20:36

here's your chance to rub shoulders with

20:38

Dennis O 'Brien, Dermot Desmond and all

20:40

of the rest of them. So first

20:42

of all, number 19, Malford has been

20:44

on sale since September 2023. That's

20:46

with Colliers and Knight Frank. The

20:49

original asking price then was 12 .75 million,

20:51

but that's dropped to 11 million. However, I

20:53

have spoken to them and they tell me

20:55

there is interest and they are very confident

20:57

of making a sale. The

20:59

other very interesting one is

21:01

further down the road, it's

21:04

a joint sale of Khalid,

21:06

which is on Shoesbury Road and

21:08

the Grove, which is on

21:10

Alesbury Road, but they're being sold

21:12

as a pair for 20

21:14

million euros. And these are

21:16

the vendor there is Paul Anderson

21:18

of the Cinema Group fame. And

21:20

what do we know about the

21:22

people living between 19 and 23

21:24

who your your neighbours might be?

21:26

So 20 was the site of

21:28

the original Chester Beatty library. The

21:30

library is off the beaten track

21:32

at Shrewsbury Road, Donnybrook. An extra

21:34

floor has been added to increase

21:36

the viewing area and allow more

21:38

of the famous collection to be

21:40

shown. It's the finest private

21:42

collection of Oriental manuscripts anywhere in

21:44

the world. And given

21:47

the valuation of the property it was

21:49

no surprised that they moved off

21:51

that site, which was an absolutely massive

21:53

site. So first of all,

21:55

they have built a mini estate of seven

21:57

houses designed by Blockham and Mar. They're

21:59

known as Shrewsbury Gardens. There are seven

22:02

of those. And I see that there's also

22:04

a resident caretaker. So when they went

22:06

on the market in 2022, the price started

22:08

at 3 million and rose up to

22:10

7 million. But there are

22:12

two other houses that are on that

22:14

original site. 20B is

22:16

called Thorn Dean, and

22:18

it was built on half the

22:21

site by, again, the businessman Nylo

22:23

Farrell, former Dragonsten judge. So

22:25

he paid 3 .6 million pounds for the

22:27

site, but he sold part of it

22:29

to the developer Sean Dunne, and then he

22:31

built a house and a 50 -foot basement

22:33

swimming pool on the rest. He sold

22:35

that for 5 million euros just in 2012,

22:38

another post -financial crash sale to

22:40

a limerick -based trust. and we

22:42

don't know much about them. So

22:45

on the other part of that site

22:47

then 20a was the the plot that

22:49

Sean Dunn bought and he built a

22:51

house called Ura which was one of

22:54

the absolute trophy homes of the Celtic

22:56

Tiger. I don't know if

22:58

you remember the famous picture of Sean

23:00

and Gail sitting looking into the

23:02

camera Sean's wearing a waistcoat you can

23:04

see a very ornate chessboard in

23:06

the back that was taken in URA,

23:08

which was their mansion there. But

23:10

that went on the market in 2017

23:12

at 7 million euros. Don

23:14

Slattery of Avalon bought it two years

23:16

later for 5 .6 million. He and his

23:18

wife Elaine have done some minor works

23:20

to it. Interestingly, they've dropped the URA

23:22

name. In my past, it's now called

23:24

Clahan. That's very interesting.

23:26

And for such a storied street, you

23:29

mentioned at some points, it was more

23:31

expensive than some addresses in Beverly Hills.

23:33

And there actually is another Hollywood connection

23:35

to Shrewsbury Road. Cool Bag,

23:37

another one of the names for the houses, was

23:39

used in a film, Far

23:42

and Away. Is that right?

23:44

That's right. So Cool Bag was sold

23:47

last year by Charlotte Fitzgerald for 12 .5

23:49

million. Which was the highest price paid

23:51

for a private residence in Ireland last

23:53

year so it did break that record

23:55

so far the buyer hasn't been identified

23:57

it had previously sold in 2012 that

23:59

year just keeps coming back all the

24:01

time for 4 .4 million prior to

24:04

that it was owned by a Cardiologist

24:06

Sean Blake and his wife Francis and

24:08

they had bought it for about 18 ,000

24:10

ponds in the late 1960s But yes,

24:12

if the walls could talk they would

24:14

tell us that they had heard the

24:16

least authentic Irish accents ever As

24:19

it was used as the film set for the

24:21

movie Far and Away starring Nicole Kidman and Tom

24:23

Cruise, which as I say,

24:25

features a really appalling attempt

24:27

at an Irish accent by Tom

24:29

Cruise. Hello Grace. Hello

24:31

Joseph. Will

24:33

everything in church tomorrow mourn?

24:35

Sounds divine and holy

24:37

Grace. We can share a

24:40

pew me at you. Too

24:42

low. Said to you.

24:44

Or at some point he says, you're a

24:47

cockroach, Shannon. Bad

24:49

Irish Hollywood accents is a

24:51

crowded field as well, so congratulations

24:53

to Tom Cruise for that

24:55

questionable honour. You've mentioned, like,

24:57

sometimes that the houses might be bought by funds

24:59

that we might not know a lot about,

25:01

and obviously a couple of them have been used

25:03

as embassies. But in general terms, is this

25:05

a street where when people buy a house, it

25:07

actually is their family home that they live

25:09

in, or are they like investment properties? There

25:12

are only two or three houses that

25:14

I could find that would be regarded

25:16

as investment properties. And even

25:18

ones that do become that tend to

25:20

get bought as private residences fairly quickly.

25:23

And various embassies, ambassadors, residences from South Africa

25:25

and other countries have been swinging in

25:27

and out of there, but they never stay

25:29

for very long. So it's like,

25:31

I mean, given the prices, it's not somewhere that

25:33

you will want to rent for very long. You

25:35

could actually go and buy a decent house of

25:37

your own with the rent that it would cost. But

25:40

there's probably a bit of safety

25:42

in numbers, you know, if you like

25:44

a bit of privacy and living

25:46

behind a high wall, but you know,

25:48

you don't want any hassle in

25:50

your neighbourhood. Well, you know, these are

25:52

lovely neighbours to have. So I

25:54

think it is still the primary street

25:56

in Ireland from a residency point

25:58

of view. And there's so many other

26:00

kind of posh, leafy areas of

26:02

Dublin. Why do you think that this

26:04

address has managed to stay so

26:07

salubrious, literally from the start of the

26:09

19th century up to today, why

26:11

it hasn't kind of gone out of

26:13

fashion. Well, I think it

26:15

depends a little bit on where it is. So

26:17

it is in a very nice part of

26:19

Dublin anyway. It is adjoined by,

26:21

let's say, Aylesbury Road and Marion Road,

26:23

which are also very nice addresses. So

26:25

it's in a sort of a cocoon.

26:28

I think what's really protected it though is just how

26:30

short it is. I mean, as I say, originally

26:32

it was 25 houses. With all the infills, you know,

26:34

I've looked at 31, but it's a street you

26:36

can walk from one end to the other two in

26:38

about five minutes. So it

26:41

just has that exclusive air

26:43

about it. I mean,

26:45

there are other parts of Dublin like

26:47

Abington and Malahide and so on,

26:49

which, you know, are almost as pricey

26:51

at times, but they're far bigger.

26:53

So there's just less of that sense

26:55

of exclusivity about them. And John,

26:57

you've spent so long researching this road

26:59

in so much depth and you've

27:01

taken us through the kind of middle

27:03

-class professionals, the doctors and consultants and

27:05

lawyers that would live there to

27:07

the property developers, to the dot -com

27:09

billionaires, to the aviation chiefs. What

27:11

does the trend on Shrewsbury Road

27:13

tell us about the Irish property

27:15

market? Well, first of all, it

27:17

tells us where the wealth is

27:19

moving to and from. So it

27:21

went from the profession classes to

27:23

the property developers to the aviation

27:25

tycoons in more recent times. So

27:27

it's a good barometer of Irish

27:29

wealth at any one time. Every

27:32

city in the world has an enclave like

27:34

this. I think what's great about Shoesby Road is

27:36

that it's not very big for a start.

27:38

I mean, the ones in London are far bigger.

27:41

But also that it is accessible. Now, I don't

27:43

mean you can walk into people's houses, but you

27:45

can walk up and down the road, which you

27:47

can do in a lot of these exclusive enclaves

27:49

because people, you know, literally stop you at a

27:51

really high gate on the street and you're not

27:53

getting past it. So while it

27:55

lasts, yeah, certainly encourage people to

27:57

take a walk or a drive up

27:59

and down Shrewsbury Road. And maybe

28:01

play the lottery Indeed. And

28:05

my thanks to John I'm

28:07

Ellen Coyne today's episode of The Indo

28:09

Daily was produced by Ian Doyle, researched

28:12

by Dave Hanrity with Sound by Stephen

28:14

O 'Brien. Archive clips from

28:16

Knight Frank, or TE, or

28:18

TE's Dragon's Den, Universal Pictures

28:20

and Irish Independent. And

28:23

if you enjoy Indo Daily, don't forget

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to follow and leave us a review. Indo

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