As a downsizer house, number 28 Greenmount Road, Terenure worked well for two decades for its owner, the late Claire Martin, according to her son, Aengus.
It was good for entertaining with its interconnecting reception rooms and the two spare bedrooms were often occupied by visiting guests. There was even space to create a library devoted to her late husband’s considerable collection of books.
Professor Gus Martin, who spent his teaching career in UCD, was a senator and sat on several cultural committees and boards including that of the Abbey Theatre.
He was much involved in the literary and cultural life of the city. Generations of Leaving Certificate students will know of him from Soundings, the poetry textbook he edited and that was in continuous use, sometimes dog-eared from previous owners, from 1969 to 2000.
By then Gus had died and it was then that Claire sold their two-storey over basement house in Rathgar and moved one suburb over, to Terenure, to the more manageable two-storey redbrick semi.
It was a calmer house, says her son; the Rathgar house had been a bustling literary hub, home to parties and cultural gatherings. While in Greenmount Road, Claire stayed active in the neighbourhood’s cultural life, most notably, says her son, around Bloomsday.
Greenmount Road is a popular road between Terenure and Rathgar villages. Number 28 was built in the 1920s when the village was spreading out and there are several reminders of that in the house in the distinctive tall timber fireplaces in the reception rooms and more modest tiled ones in the bedrooms; the panelled staircase in the hall and the wide floorboards, sanded and polished in several rooms.
The timber-framed sunroom off the eat-in kitchen opens up the rear of the house. The rear garden, mature and well stocked with shrubs and flowers is west facing. Work on the garage in recent years included installing a shower room and utility room. Upstairs there are three bedrooms and a good-sized bathroom.
There is 137sq m/1,475sq ft of space and new owners have the potential to extend, subject to planning, most obviously at the side where the garage is. The house is likely to appeal to families trading up.
The front garden has been mostly gravelled over for parking.
Now an executor sale, and the Martin’s library taken away in preparation for the sale, 28 Greenmount Road is on the market through Sherry FitzGerald seeking €950,000.
