This large, handsome house on around 1½ acres in Foxrock, built in 1903, has a dramatic and very distinctive entrance. French doors framed by Doric columns open into a bright parquet-floored reception hall with a glass dome overhead. Glazed doors and windows open into a sunroom on the left and straight ahead, into the large inner hall.
Here also is a lovely herringbone parquet floor, an elaborately plastered ceiling, and twin arches leading through to the rear of the house. At the end is the back hall, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and French doors into the back garden.
It's a striking introduction to the house and no surprise that the interior of The Bawn, Kerrymount Avenue, Foxrock, Dublin 18, is listed. Other period features in this Crampton-built house include elaborate plasterwork, original mahogany fireplaces and panelled mahogany doors. The 510sq m (5,490sq ft) seven-bed house is for sale for €6 million through Sherry FitzGerald.
On a hot June afternoon, it’s easy to imagine the world the house was built in, when Foxrock was developed as a garden suburb with grand houses where residents could play croquet or tennis on large lawns. There will be development potential in The Bawn’s 1.5-acre grounds, subject to the usual planning requirements.
Dual aspect
Inside, the house is much brighter than many Edwardian houses, and many of the rooms are dual aspect. A sittingroom on the left of the front hall, with deep plaster coving, opens through French doors into the sunroom at the front; doors on either side of the fireplace open into a small library. Double doors open from the back hall into a long drawingroom with a marble fireplace and a deep bay window overlooking the rear garden. A morning room on the other side of the hall opens onto a back patio.
The diningroom on the right of the hall – with a beamed ceiling, deep cornicing, an elaborate carved fireplace and a table that seats 14 – opens into the conservatory. Floored with terracotta tiles, this "beautiful rectangular conservatory of timber construction makes a striking feature at the front of the house", says Peter Pearson in Between the Mountains and the Sea in his description of The Bawn.
A butler’s pantry off the diningroom leads to the large and somewhat dated, kitchen/breakfastroom: extended in 1992, it’s a bright space, with a wide bow window overlooking the rear garden from the breakfast room. There’s also a utility room and a downstairs toilet/cloakroom at this level.
The entire house was refurbished in 1992 and five of the seven bedrooms upstairs are en suite. The main bedroom has a wide bay window overlooking the garden and a fully-tiled en suite with bath and shower. There’s also a study at this level. The six other bedrooms, off the first landing, are all doubles, four of which are en suite; one, down a few steps at the end of the hall, is a wide double that looks like it was once a children’s nursery.
Long lawns
Outside, an iron gate leads past an octagonal gardener’s house to a long tree-lined path dividing two long lawns; there is access to a laneway at the rear right side of the garden. Trees in the garden, front and back, include cherry and lilac, a Monterey Cypress as well as sycamore, birch, beech and pine. Very tall trees shield the front garden, and the sweeping gravelled driveway, from Kerrymount Avenue
The vendors, Bernard Somers, a former AIB and Central Bank director and his wife, Marguerite, bought The Bawn in 1986 and according to selling agent Daphne Kaye are now selling because their family are grown. The property was alluded to in a Commercial Court hearing in March this year in relation to monies owing on a €3.62 million loan secured by the Somers on various assets, including The Bawn in Foxrock.
