There’s a small framed motto on the mantelpiece in the home office of 5 Palmerston Park and it reads “Old lawyers never retire they just lose their appeal”, it sits in front of a Waterford glass gavel – a quirky gift for an Irish judge if ever there was one and another clue to the house’s owner.
The two-storey over-basement Victorian redbrick semi was for nearly 40 years the home of the late judge Paul Carney and his wife the late Dr Marjorie Young. Now an executor’s sale the five-bedroom, 323sq m (3,477sq ft) home is for sale though Sherry FitzGerald seeking €2.395 million.
The family are only the second to own the house since it was built in the mid-1880s. When they moved in they revamped and redecorated, doing the usual checklist including adding two en suites to two of the larger bedrooms, revamping three other bathrooms and installing a new kitchen down at garden level, with a still gleaming blue Aga taking pride of place. Down through the years as their family grew they redecorated regularly.
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These are grand houses – a line of mostly tall red bricks built in the same era and facing the beautifully maintained local amenity of Palmerston Park – and inside, number 5 has many period features intact including original chimney pieces in most rooms, sash windows, ornate plasterwork and wooden floorboards.
It also – to its benefit – is different to most of its neighbours because it has a return giving it additional rooms on each level. Also access to the basement level isn’t under the stairs as is usual in these types of houses but is to the side.
The interior proportions are expansive, with high ceilings on the two upper levels, and a wide hall and stairs.
Wide stone steps lead to the front door beyond which on this level are two connected reception rooms where the front, like its mirror bedroom upstairs, has two tall sash windows looking out to the park. A shower room was installed in what would originally have been a butler’s pantry. The room in the return on this level was the judge’s home office, a cosy unassuming place with its original cast iron and tile fireplace and windows on two walls. On the floor above are four bedrooms, including one in the return while the family bathroom is at the top of the house.
Down at garden level there’s the fifth bedroom, a family room, a bathroom installed under the granite steps, a utility in the rear return and the eat-in kitchen opening to the back garden.
New owners will update but they could also extend to the rear to make an even larger kitchen – subject to planning – without impacting greatly on the granite walled rear garden. The house is nicely set back from the road and the front garden is intact so on-street parking will have to do.
