Garden potential on Highfield Road

New homes are easy, but comparing the price of period properties is well-nigh impossible – they may look almost identical from the outside but changes down through the decades, either grand improvements or everyday wear and tear, make price comparisons between old properties difficult.

Gardens are different though – no matter how landscaped or lushly planted it gets down, at the very least, to square footage and orientation, and sometimes to development potential.

The arrival on the market of number 82 Highfield Road in Rathgar, Dublin, gives the opportunity to see what buyers in this neighbourhood are willing to pay for a garden. Just up the road at number 73, a similar Stringer-built Edwardian redbrick has been on sale since October for €1.75 million. There the downsizing owners have divided the garden which bounds Neville Road to build a mews for themselves. Number 82, however, still has its wide 35m (115ft) long garden and its pretty original three-car garage – with 262sq m (2,820sq ft). It has just come on the market through Lisney for €1.85 million.

In 1908 the idea was that these modest suburban family houses – by comparison with the vast Victorian redbricks in the area – were built to appeal to a new generation of upwardly mobile professionals who had a car and only one servant. Number 82 borders Villiers Road, so there is the potential – subject to planning permission – for some of it to be sectioned off for development potential.

It’s thought that the original owner of number 82 was an American woman with modern ideas. She had an early version of central heating installed, and she made other changes including opening up the hall to incorporate the reception room on the right.

Kitchen extension

By the time the present owners bought in the early 1970s the house was in two units so they brought it back to single family use adding a small kitchen extension at the rear and enclosing that front room so that now off the wide welcoming hall are three fine reception rooms on either side.

Originally the two rooms on the left would have been divided by double doors but they are now quite separate – something new owners will probably change. That back room opens into one of the house’s many charming original features – a sun room with highly decorative stained glass windows. Indeed, stained glass is a feature throughout this house – in the double hall doors, the two tall windows in the gable and topping most other windows. Outside the timber porch trip extends around the side – an attractive feature. Upstairs there are five bedrooms over two floors and a separate bathroom and toilet.

Renovate

Whatever new owners do in terms of the north-facing rear garden they will renovate the house from top to bottom – the exterior is protected – updating the bathroom, installing en suites, and knocking the small kitchen extension to the rear to build a much larger more modern kitchen. There is a good deal of work to be done – more than is needed in the slightly smaller number 73.

The front garden which has a pedestrian entrance on to both Villiers Road and Highfield Road is still under lawn fringed by tall shrubs – most other houses on the road have gravelled over their front gardens for parking.