Arts and Crafts extravaganza in Rathfarnham for €2.95m

This large, lovely and very accessible family home, built in 1895, is as fine an example of an Arts and Crafts Movement house as one is likely to find. Dublin craft workers involved with the movement, which aimed to bring back traditional, decorative crafts and raise the level of design, were known for their stained glass, graphic art and textiles. Examples of their work, both original and replicated by the vendor, add lustre everywhere in Hershal.

Plasterwork and ceiling roses are ornate; floors are tiled or of polished wood. Wallpapers, rich in texture and colour (some hand-painted), look as if they were hung yesterday but are, the vendor says, 20 years old. Curtains have a similar opulence. Several impressive marble fireplaces were sourced for different rooms, porthole windows feature ornate stained glass, panelled doors are original, and windows – box and bay, as well as any number of French windows – give views of wraparound gardens where tall trees are as as old as the house and where there is a south-facing pergola, lawns and ivy-clad walls.

Extension

The vendor, who is downsizing, has lived in Hershal since 1999. It had been empty for a while before she moved in but the original features were, she says, still in place. She has been careful to keep the mood of the house intact, notably in an extension to the side and rear which has given Hershal a dramatically large livingroom with a double row of velux windows in a high, pitched ceiling, and in a kitchen/ breakfastroom with natural stone floor and raised, separate sittingroom off.

Agent DNG is quoting €2.95 million for the 485sq m (5,520sq ft) property which has a separate two-bed gate lodge, detached garage with pitstop, kitchen and WC, and all of it on 0.72 acres.

The main house has five bedrooms (three ensuite plus a dressingroom in the main), a formal drawingroom and diningroom, livingroom and games room (the latter was once a ballroom), large family bathroom, kitchen/breakfastroom, sittingroom and study.

Shining wood

The bedrooms are off the first floor landing, arranged on two levels. The main bedroom has a box window set into a pitched ceiling with marble fireplace, impressively complete ensuite, and a dressingroom fitted in shining wood.

The gate lodge has a kitchen/diningroom, livingroom and two bedrooms, and could be rented for income. The detached garage has a pitched, wood-panelled ceiling, an original service pit, kitchen, WC and endless potential.

There is parking for several cars to the front while a rear gate provides access to park walks in Charleville Square.