Detached Donnybrook home with lots of flexible space for a family, for €2.75m

Blink and you’d miss Greenfield Park, a small cul-de-sac off the N11 dual carriageway. It feels like it’s a long way from the heart of Donnybrook but to those in the know, including several real-estate scions, it’s a very smartly located address.

Set opposite Nutley Lane – home to Elm Park Golf Club, St Vincent’s University Hospital, RTÉ and Tesco’s flagship store in the Merrion Centre – the road has direct access to UCD and all its amenities.

These include a first-rate sports centre with 50m swimming pool, cinemas, shops, snackeries and its alumni centre, which boasts a bar that several residents on the road call their local.

Housebuilder Cairn Homes also identified this off-the-beaten-track as a premium locale for its prestigious apartment and penthouse scheme, Donnybrook Gardens, which launched last summer.

According to selling agent director Des Donnelly at Hooke & McDonald, almost 40 of the 85 units are already sold, including four penthouses asking €1.7million and above. Eighteen are listed on the Property Price Register and range from €819,792 to €1.25million.

Extending to 370 sq m (4,000sq ft), number 28 Greenfield Park is a sizeable, six-bedroom home that will appeal to house-hunting families. The owner says they got to know all their kids’ friends when they were growing up because many of their parties were held at UCD’s play areas and, as the nearest house to the university, number 28 became the default for pre-drinks on nights out.

The relatively affordable taxi fare back to Donnybrook meant friends stayed over regularly. The property’s layout allows for multiple sets of friends to be in the property at the one time without any family member ever feeling short-changed.

At hall level there is a fine formal sitting-cum-dining room that is dual aspect. It opens through to a smart sunroom where the owners read the weekend papers. To the rear is a large, light-filled kitchen with polished granite worktops, an Aga and a large utility where there is a drying rack and oodles of storage.

Adjoining it is a sitting room whose focal point is a wall-mounted gas fire. Bifolding glass doors divide these spaces and can be opened when you want to keep an eye on small kids and shuttered to dial down the animated chatter of teens.

To the front is a study that gets gorgeous afternoon sun. One of the owners uses it as his personal listening suite, displaying the vinyl sleeves of his current playlist on floating shelves.

The house is two-storey to the front and three-storey to the back where a second floor was added. There are four roomy double bedrooms on the first floor. These include the main room, which has a large, dual-aspect en suite bathroom with separate shower and bath and a dressing room. The smallest of the doubles is currently used as a TV room for when friends come over.

The house has acres of storage, walls of wardrobes and a smartly laid-out hot press where a stack of Elfa wire drawers includes one for each of the kids’ laundry and another for those single socks that have lost their comrades. This clever use of the space is repeated throughout the property.

There are two more charming and light-filled doubles on the second floor. These share a shower room. You can see the Dublin mountains and UCD’s water tower from one where there is walk-in access to attic space hidden behind a door wallpapered in the same print as the wall.

The property has off-street parking for several cars as well as a large garage and separate side access to the back.

While the garden faces northwest, it does gets evening sun. It is very private with very little of the six-storey Donnybrook Gardens scheme, which is to the rear, visible through the mature hedging. The property is asking €2.75million through agents Hooke & MacDonald.