Michelle Rocca is selling her Ballsbridge home, a detached house on a third of an acre off Anglesea Road. She purchased the five-bedroom house, Somerset, at the end of 1996 for £580,000. Previously, it was the home of the missing Irish investment broker, Tony Taylor.
Now refurbished from top to bottom and with its one-third of an acre of garden superbly landscaped, it is expected to make in excess of £1.2 million at a Lisney auction on July 1st.
Ms Rocca is planning to move abroad to further her studies, according to her friend and publicity agent, Mary Finan. Lisney is handling the sale of the 1920s Tudor-style house which backs on to the Dodder and adjoins the grounds of Merrion Cricket Club. It shares a long driveway and electronically controlled gates with another property, but the second house is well screened behind a high hedgerow and trees. However it does have a right of way through the forecourt of Somerset to its own private drive.
Inside, Somerset is a fairly modest house with two reception rooms, a study or family room and a large kitchen and utility room downstairs, three bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor and a further two attic bedrooms on the top floor. It might not appeal to those who are looking for a grand Dublin 4 residence with large reception rooms but in many ways it is an ideal home with its friendly proportions and focus on the garden. There is a spacious hallway with the staircase rising to one side and a door to the garden tucked away on one side. To the right is a pretty sittingroom with a period fireplace and bay window. Straight ahead is the drawing room, a larger room with fresh apple green walls and an Adam-style fireplace. It has French doors to the garden and a second bay window overlooking a patio at the back of the house.
Next door is a third room - ideal as a playroom or den - and it leads on to the kitchen. This is a really attractive room with a pitched timber ceiling, warm terracotta tiled floor and terrific range of limed oak units. It too has a door to the sunny patio at the back of the house, where clumps of aurum lilies are now in bloom. Beyond the kitchen is a large utility room. Upstairs, the main bedroom mirrors the drawingroom downstairs, and it has a dressingroom and an en suite bathroom off it. There are two smaller bedrooms on this floor sharing a good-sized and attractively tiled bathroom.
A narrow staircase leads up to the attic floor where there is a landing big enough to be a sittingroom, with two bedrooms leading off it. Children will love this part of the house with its sloping ceilings and dormer windows.
Simply but expensively decorated throughout in warm shades of cream and terracotta, the house is in walk-in condition. Landscape designer Arthur Shackleton was commissioned to redesign and plant the garden and the result is a really delightful scheme that can be enjoyed from every room. Most of the garden is at the side of the house and is screened by tall trees giving it a very private feel. There is a large area of lawn with gravel walks and herbaceous borders all around, and, at its centre, a round pond surrounded by box hedging. Beyond the boundary wall, the trees of Herbert Park increase the sense of privacy of this marvellously refurbished property.
