LIFF HOUSE, the home of lawyer David McGeough and his partner, Briony Wilkinson, commands an enviable view of the sparkling waters of Killiney Bay. This rocky flank of south Co Dublin was once a threadbare landscape of gorse and scrubby trees overlying the granite hills that fall down to the sea. In the middle of the 19th century, a number of elegant houses sprang up on the steep slopes: some, including Cliff House (then Green Hill), were designed by the well-known Irish architects Deane & Woodward. Other buildings devised by the neo-Gothic-loving duo were the Kildare Street Club and Trinity College Museum in Dublin and the Oxford University Museum. Green Hill was completed in 1862 for Joseph and Fanny Robinson, renowned
