TORQUAY ROAD €2.5m:Light, space and elegance with grounds to match are on offer in this luxurious pair of Foxrock homes, writes ROSE DOYLE
FIRST impressions, in the case of Woodlawn, Golf Lane, Torquay Road, Foxrock, Dublin 18, are entirely accurate. Seen through an avenue of soaring larches and a single, majestic oak, it has an air of graceful ease that becomes the real thing when you step inside.
The long-time home of Eithne and Liam Healy, Woodlawn has a reassuring, rambling style that makes the most of the botanical variety of trees in the surrounding 0.6 acres. French windows figure largely, opening onto either the patio or lawns, and the seclusion is so complete you could be in the deepest countryside.
The Healys (she is a former chair of the Abbey Theatre and a former Arts Council member, he is former CEO of Independent News Media (INM) ) built Woodlawn 30 years ago. With their family reared, it is time to move on, although with some regret. “This is a house with good vibrations,” Eithne Healy says, “we’ve had a brilliant 30 years here.”
Woodlawn, the last private house built by architect Liam Tierney before he died, has four/five bedrooms, four reception rooms (including a sunroom) kitchen/breakfastroom and a floor area of some 325sq m (3,500sq ft). For sale by private treaty through Daphne Kaye Associates the asking price is €2.5 million.
In its 30 years of life, the house has had a couple of major, architecturally-designed refurbishments. Alfred Cochrane added a feature sunroom 20 years ago and Denis Looby, a decade later, redesigned the entire kitchen/family area.
Cochrane’s dramatic sunroom extends via a wide curve into a corresponding arc of tree-bordered lawn. It has six French windows in limed oak and a panelled, French oak cathedral ceiling and makes a particularly fine diningroom.
The formal drawingroom has an antique, white-marble fireplace and multi-paned bow window. A deeply silent room with a cream and gold colour scheme, its acoustic quality is helped by fabric-covered walls. The nearby entrance hallway has wide planks of dark oak and another antique, marble fireplace.
The kitchen/family area is a series of bright, interlinking spaces. The breakfastroom area has a creamy coloured old stone floor and leads to a rear lobby that has something of an alternative, and shadier, sunroom about it.
Alfred Cochrane was involved in the refurbishment of a front-facing study/library where a witty trompe-l’oeil conceals a full and functioning bar. The stairway is lit by a 3m-high window and the main, en suite bedroom has a bow window and fireplace.
Woodlawn, Torquay Road, Dublin 18
Five-bedon mature gardens with dramatic sunroom
Agent: Daphne Kaye Associates
