Vacancy Watch: Council sits on disused Dracula house for 11 years as vacancy sucks the lifeblood of the city

At a large three-storey building on the corner of Killarney Street and Buckingham Street Lower in the north inner-city, plants grow out of the top windows and the red brickwork is stained and faded.

Around the back, ivy creeps over most of the building. Jagged metal fencing on the wall guards the jungly garden.

The lower windows are boarded up. One has a broken window frame. Murals of vampires adorn the boards. 

On the ground floor a haunting Dracula mural stares out onto Killarney Street with dark eyes, narrow features and pale skin. 

A vampire’s blood runs cold, so the story goes, not alive, not dead, but existing. A bit like a vacant house. 

A plaque on the side of the building says that Bram Stoker, the world-famous author of Dracula lived on the street from 1858 to 1864. 

Dublin City Council has been the registered owner of 19 Buckingham Street Lower since September 2014, show property records. 

The council didn’t respond to queries submitted last Friday about whether it plans to renovate the building, and why the building doesn’t feature on its monthly report to councillors with planned social and affordable housing projects. 

Earlier this month, a council official said the council was adopting a zero-tolerance approach to dereliction.

The Minister for Housing, Fianna Fáil TD James Browne, has also come out strongly against dereliction and vacancy, condemning it as “anti-social behaviour” to leave properties idle.

Councillors recently agreed a new framework for dealing with dereliction and vacancy in the city, that is first to be tested out on two city-centre streets.

Green Party Councillor Janet Horner says she is surprised that the council has owned 19 Buckingham Street Lower since 2014 and not done anything with it. 

The council’s team that works on dereliction is under-resourced, says Horner.

“It does need to be a cross city council effort to tackle dereliction, and area offices need to be taking an active interest in derelict sites in their area,” she says. 

What is the problem?

Despite its condition, 19 Buckingham Street Lower is not on the council’s derelict sites register. 

By law, a property is defined as derelict if it “detracts, or is likely to detract, to a material degree from the amenity, character or appearance of land in the neighbourhood”.

Past official responses to councillors’ queries about the building show a confusing timeline.

In September 2019, the council told then-Green Party Councillor Neasa Hourigan – who had asked about properties that the council was moving to compulsorily purchase – that it was undertaking “preliminary work” in relation to 19 Buckingham Street Lower. 

In January 2022, a council report listing property it owns in the north inner-city said of 19 Buckingham Street: “Partial title, CPO necessary to regularise.”

Those statements don’t appear to tally with the land registry records, which have the council as the registered owner since September 2014. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said that the council has owned the building since 2014. 

But it hasn’t applied for funding to renovate it under the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund because the property wasn’t eligible, the spokesperson said. 

“It was ineligible for funding under Call 3” – the call focused on vacancy and dereliction –  “as the scheme does not support properties acquired by local authorities prior to its launch in 2023,” said the Department of Housing spokesperson. 

That funding is not intended for full-scale renovations, she says, but for quick turnarounds. “Limited facelift works are permitted.”

Indeed, a circular outlining the rules for the call says the fund can be used to buy a derelict property, and any works required “to de-risk or improve the site/building to make it more attractive for reuse, development by others or onward sale”.

“The intention is that the fund would be replenished from the proceeds received from the end use /user, thereby allowing the local authority to put in place a rolling programme to tackle long-term vacancy and dereliction without recourse

to borrowing and the associated financial risk,” it says.

It isn’t to be used to turn derelict and vacant buildings into social or affordable homes, the circular says.

The Department of Housing spokesperson didn’t respond to a follow-up question as to whether the ineligibility means there is no funding stream available to the council to regenerate the building. 

The inspiration for Dracula

Artwork on 19 Buckingham Street Lower commemorates Bram Stoker’s connection to the street and to the north inner-city, says local historian Terry Fagan. 

The author of Dracula lived up the street, says Fagan, at 17 Buckingham Street Upper, which used to be located where the Sean Treacy House flats are now. 

The council painted the murals and erected the plaque in 2018 and it used the house for a haunted house at Halloween, says Fagan. “I think it could be in a bad way inside.” 

As of July 2024, there were 2,971 households on the council’s social housing lists for Area H, which includes the north inner-city, Phibsborough and East Wall. 

Dublin City Council hasn’t responded to queries sent Friday, asking what it plans to do with this substantial three-storey building on Buckingham Street. 

Noel Wardick, CEO of the Dublin City Community Co-op, which has its office in the area, says that all state-owned buildings should be brought back into use as homes. 

“In general, we would wish to see DCC and the state invest the appropriate resources in all the property it owns so that can be brought into full use for the benefit of the community,” he said.

The priority should be housing for families, says Wardick – but the building could also become a Bram Stoker-themed museum or tourist attraction. “To celebrate the role that the area played in cultivating his imagination.” 

Nearby is what once was the suicide graveyard in Ballybough.

According to a Dublin City Council blog, during the late 1850s, when Stoker was a child, “bodies of certain people were staked, pinning them into their coffins, to prevent them from rising from the dead, as it was widely believed their spirits could not enter the kingdom of heaven and would be condemned to wander the earth.”