A 1970s seven-bedroom house in a wooded setting by Killiney Golf Club is designed for open-plan living. Rose Doyle reports

Rarely has an address been more appropriate: Denecroft, The Woods, Killiney, Co Dublin is one of nine detached houses in a dramatically wooded enclave off Ballinclea Road.

Developed on a raised woodland clearing in the mid-1970s, The Woods has a tree-lined road winding gently through an extended landscape of mature trees that give sheltered privacy.

Killiney Golf Club is at one side and the property has views, especially through the stripped branches of winter, across the bay to Poolbeg.

Denecroft is one of the innermost houses. Built originally on stilts and designed to make the most both of its location and 0.246-acre garden, it has large, plate glass windows everywhere and a wide first floor balcony on two sides.

Where there were stilts there is now a fully integrated garden level, an extension which gives Denecroft seven bedrooms, two reception rooms, study, kitchen/breakfastroom and a floor area of 341sq m (3,673sq ft).

Agent Sherry FitzGerald is quoting a guide of €1.4 million in advance of the September 20th auction.

Typical of its decade, Denecroft's first floor, open-plan living/diningroom stretches from the front to back of the house with rear and side walls which are almost all window.

The balcony wraps around this room and the fireplace, the only one in the house, is of white-painted brick. A honey-coloured, wood-panelled ceiling is repeated in other rooms.

The kitchen, which has timber fittings and integrated appliances, has night-time views through the trees of the city lights.

A study, at the other side of what is a good-sized landing, has a window over the garden and a glass wall onto the landing and stairs.

The main, en suite bedroom and four other bedrooms are on this level, as is a bright family bathroom with a Velux window. A useful chute delivers soiled laundry from the landing to the garden level utility room.

The development of the once-stilted garden level added two bedrooms, a reception room, utility, cloakroom, toilet and two garages.

The reception hallway on this level gives views through to the rear garden and patio while a green-painted reception room mirrors the main reception room overhead with walls of windows to the side and rear.

Garages apart, there is parking for several cars on the gravelled front.