Victorian with an Italianate twist for €4.5m

If you were dreaming up your dream home, you mightn’t do better than Ros Na Greine. Unless you’re the type whose dreams are more along the plate glass and poured concrete lines, this detached, double-fronted Victorian pile has it all.

For a start, there’s the location: set back from the road on leafy and desirable Avoca Avenue, you’re out of the thick of the city, but within a sniff of Blackrock, schools, shops, restaurants and access to town.

Then there’s the house itself, a classic Victorian with an Italianate twist. Even before you get to the poplars and planting in the beautiful walled and highly private back garden (complete with charming fountain, just when you thought it couldn’t get any prettier), there’s a sense of something Continental that sets it apart from the more usual redbricks.

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Inside is an elegant hallway and a show-stopper of a drawing room. This runs front to back, with magnificent fireplaces and warm wooden floors, but your eye is continually drawn to the trio of French windows that give you a taste of how nice it will be in that lovely back garden. Friends of the owners will attest to the place’s suitability for truly excellent parties.

The current owners, who have lived here for 25 years, have kept the 607sq m (6560sq ft) house in near-perfect condition, updating where updating has been needed but holding its period charm and character entirely intact. This extends to working window shutters and sash windows throughout, cornicing and coving, and an eye for smaller detail – right down to the fixtures and fittings in the downstairs cloakroom.

Garden-side is a sunny breakfast room, a more recent addition but completely in keeping. It reaches back to the kitchen, nicely fitted out with china blue units and kitchen island. There’s a gas-fired Aga and an additional Neff oven – because as everyone who has an Aga knows, you need a bit of both.

A utility room off this keeps everything tidy, and there’s a further laundry room beyond. And, of course, a wine room.

There’s also a beautiful livingroom and diningroom at this level as well. Up the stairs, made brighter by a half-landing with an arched Georgian-style window beyond, are the first of the five bedrooms on the return, which would also make an excellent study.

The bedrooms are all doubles. The main bedroom has a dual aspect and is en suite. The fifth bedroom is up again, so the sleeping spaces feel nicely separate, although if you’re one of those families who can’t imagine life without a bathroom for every bedroom, you might want to puzzle out some solutions. As it is right now, though, it’s all perfectly lovely.

While Victorians didn’t really “do” en suites, they did have coaches. The former coach house at Ros Na Greine has been converted into a separate mews/office. This has its own access front and back, so is self-contained. Downstairs is an entrance hall with staircase, and a larger room with French windows to the garden.

On the first floor is another office and smaller WC. If you wanted to convert this to an au pair flat or other separate living accommodation, there is landing space to juggle with on the first floor to make it work.

Outside to the front is plenty of off-street parking, and everything is secure behind electronic gates, mature trees and hedging.

Ros Na Greine, which is for sale with Sherry FitzGerald for €4.5 million, is like a lovely oasis. A world of its own, and beautifully maintained; if you're at the point where you want a house to say, discreetly, that you've arrived, you would find it hard to do better than arriving here.