€1.85m Glenageary pile hits right note

This very tall, early Victorian house in Glenageary, is well-maintained but needing modernisation. It has large rooms, high ceilings with elaborate cornicing, marble fireplaces – and best of all, a very long and well-cared for back garden.

When its vendor, Ann Moran-Kelly, was growing up in Dunluce, the area in front of her childhood home on Upper Glenageary Road "was country . . . fresh milk was delivered in a cart every morning from the farm across the road – as children, we loved to see the donkey coming".

A career as an opera singer brought Moran-Kelly away from Ireland and she now lives in Geneva. With her two daughters based in Europe, she says the time has come to sell the house owned by her family for 85 years.

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Dunluce, 173 Upper Glenageary Road, Co Dublin, a 425sq m (4,575sq ft) semi-detached six-bedroom house, is now for sale by private treaty through Sotheby's International for €1.85 million.

It is one of three houses on Upper Glenageary Road near the corner with Adelaide Road believed to have been built by coal merchants Tedcastles around 1850. New owners will need to look at rewiring the house, installing new heating and plumbing. They’ll want a new kitchen and modern bathrooms and will need to redecorate. But for all that, it has the feeling of a cared-for family home.

Gates open into a wide gravelled front space shared by Sunninghill, the house next door. A large porch inside the front door opens into a short hall with elaborate white cornicing and walls painted a deep green.  The diningroom on the left of the hall, like the drawingroom at the back of the house, is still furnished in Victorian style: a polished eight-seater dining table sits in the centre of the room,  with a large sideboard behind it.

The deep and tall bay window looks over busy Upper Glenageary Road, there’s a  brown marble fireplace with tile inset – and in a corner of the room, a dumb waiter connected to the kitchen below.

Bay windows

An imposing arch in the hall leads to the drawingroom where the owner’s baby grand piano sits near another bay window overlooking the back garden. This room also has a marble fireplace.

A few steps to the left of the drawingroom is a downstairs toilet and a small room described as a library which has a door opening on to granite steps leading down to the terraced back garden.

The kitchen is downstairs, at the front of the house at garden level: it has a bow window, a tiled floor and of course, the dumb waiter. Buyers may reconfigure the downstairs space to create a large open-plan modern kitchen – perhaps incorporating  a space described as a study at the side of the kitchen.

Stable

On the other side of the kitchen, a door from a pantry opens into a courtyard next to an old redbrick stable at the side of the house: there’s potential to expand into this space – or use it for extra parking.

A large familyroom at garden level,  underneath the drawingroom, has a door out to the back garden;  beside it is a tiny “staff bedroom” where a maid would probably have slept.

There are three bedrooms on the first floor, past a landing with a toilet and separate family bathroom. The large main bedroom, over the drawingroom, has a marble fireplace and views past the spire of St Paul’s church in Glenageary towards the sea.

The two other double bedrooms at the front of the house have an unusual curved wall between them, with deep coving, and fireplaces.

There are three garret-style bedrooms in the attic – the best view of the sea is from a very narrow arched window in the long, narrowish bedroom at the back of the house.

The garden has been more than just maintained in the owner’s absence, it’s been given lots of care.

A gravelled path divides a long manicured lawn, with a well-planted rose garden on one side. The path leads through an arch to the end of the garden, which is sheltered by very tall, mature trees and a stone wall.

Dunluce is a short walk from Glenageary Dart station, and there’s a bus stop across the road.