Ranelagh village is known for its boutiques, bookshops, restaurants, gourmet food shops and other independent businesses. But from 1777 until its closure in 1897, the biggest enterprise in the area was Toole’s Nurseries, which specialised in trees and covered about 12 hectares (30 acres) within the area formerly known as Cullenswood, west of the village, as Deirdre Kelly describes in her book Four Roads to Dublin. The entrance to the nursery from the main road was at the corner of what became Ashfield Road (the trees live on in the names of the neighbouring streets, built on the nursery lands at the turn of the 20th century).
Ashfield Road is now one-way from the junction near the Beechwood Luas stop and since lockdown, according to Jerome and Patricia who own number 18, the morning rush has all but disappeared. There is disc car parking on the road but it’s ideally suited for cycling everywhere, as they do; their custom-built bike storage is sheltered by hedging in the front garden of their mid-terrace home.
Inside, there’s a lesson in how to respectfully restore and refresh a period home. When they bought it, 13 years ago, they used their professional skills – she a town planner, he a graphic designer – to create a bright kitchen/diningroom that ends on the same building line as the old return and outhouses, and takes up the full width of the plot. From here the morning sun shines a welcome along the hall and draws the eye out to the private, well-stocked back garden where sparrows chirp overhead.
The kitchen, a white handle-less style by Kube, has clever touches including an upstand on the bar-counter/bookshelf/island that means you can’t see cooking clutter from the dining table, and a long glass splashback that’s easy to clean and reflects light; the recently laid white marmoleum floor does the same job, absorbs sound and feels soft underfoot. As well as sliding doors there are three rooflights, each 2m by 3.5m, that bring light into the middle room and the cleverly configured internal utility room. Under the stairs are a pantry and a guest toilet.
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Wooden steps lead up from the kitchen/livingroom to the original part of the house, and from here you can see out the front window to the green beyond. The middle room has custom shelving and a desk for home working; it’s painted a cosy, enveloping Templar Grey and opens through folding doors to the front room. Both reception rooms have gas fires in matching stone fireplaces from Buckleys, and wooden floors run all the way through. The front room is painted a duck-eggy Blue Folly by Colourtrend, and Patricia says she finds it especially restful to read here in the evenings by the westerly light.
Upstairs are three bedrooms; the first, off the half-landing, is a cute single with a cherry-blossom wall pattern. It has smart built-in wardrobes with wooden doors Jerome designed in a mid-century style. A longer run of these takes up a wall of the main bedroom at the front, which benefits from two big windows, and a square stained-glass window at the top of the stairs “casts beams of purple across the landing”, says Jerome. For a mid-terrace house, it’s really bright; the en suite here, and in the family bathroom, are brightened by Veluxes.
There are decorative cast-iron fireplaces in the main bedroom, and in the second double at the back; even with these, the new insulation and windows have yielded a Ber of B3. The family are moving to gain an extra bedroom and have put their 168sq m (1,808sq ft) home on the market through DNG with an asking price of €1.475 million.
