A villa-style house beside the People’s Park in Dún Laoghaire was given a makeover after being sold in 2012 for €456,000, the Property Price Register shows. The couple who bought it stripped it back to the shell, put on a new roof, new sash windows, insulation and reconfigured it, bringing the kitchen from the basement upstairs so they could enjoy views across the park next door.
Working initially with Eavan English of Eedi Studio interior design company and later with interior designer Jacqueline Hall, they kept or replaced period details of the house, built in the 1850s, and redecorated in a style that mixes period and modern to good effect. Number 1 Summerhill Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, an end-of-terrace 160 sq m (1,722 sq ft) single-storey-over-garden-level three-bed in walk-in condition is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald, seeking €1.3 million. It has a C1 Ber.
The house, mostly hidden from view behind a tall timber screen, has an intriguing ARP plaque nestling beside plants lining the steps to the front door. It’s a reminder of when a previous owner was an Air Raid Patrol warden in the second World War. The need for such a position was dramatically illustrated when two German bombs fell across the road from the house on Rosmeen Park and Rosmeen Gardens. There’s a story that a moulding in number 1 fell down and the angry owner went to the German ambassador’s residence in Monkstown to complain.
There are just two rooms on the main floor of the house, a large drawingroom at the front and the kitchen at the rear, both floored, like the hall, with limewashed original floorboards. Walls in the hall and pretty much all the rooms are panelled and painted white or pale grey; striking artwork lines the walls.
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The drawingroom, to the left of the entrance hall, has three rows of intricate plasterwork in the high ceiling, one made for the new owners by the Old Mould Company in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow. It’s an elegant room, with a fireplace with a white marble mantelpiece and orange tiles inset, and two tall sash windows with working shutters. Two grey marble-topped cabinets are built-in on either side of the fireplace; on the opposite wall a tall shelving unit holds books and pictures. A striking light hangs beneath the centre rose: the circular light – called Skygarden by Flos – has a floral design on the inside part of the shade.
The Victorian Kitchen Company kitchen/diningroom next door is modern country style: timber units are painted Farrow & Ball Stiffkey Blue while an island unit with a grey marble top is painted a deep Eating Room Red from the same brand. The splashback behind a Rangemaster stove and Belfast sink is made of pretty mosaic tiles from Fired Earth. Two tall sash windows look over the stone walls of the back garden into the People’s Park. A comfy chair between the dining table and one window is a good vantage point from which to view it.
At the end of the hall is a door that opens on to steps down to the garden. A staircase with a striped carpet leads to the garden level, floored with wide plank oak, where there are three bedrooms, a family bathroom and small utility room. The main bedroom has a herringbone parquet floor, built-in wardrobes, a tall white fireplace with blue tiles inset and an interestingly-panelled wall behind the bed. A small en suite shower room is fully tiled. A lift-and-tilt window/door opens on to steps leading up to the front garden.
Two other bedrooms, both small doubles, one at the front, the other at the back of the house, both decorated as children’s rooms, have built-in desks and wardrobes. A smart family bathroom has a large step-in shower, a claw foot bath and is half-tiled with white subway tiles beneath walls painted dark green.
A small utility room off the downstairs hall – where there is useful understairs storage – has room for cupboards as well as washer and dryer. It’s next to a door into the back garden which is modest-sized, has an Astroturf lawn, is surrounded by stone walls – and sheltered by tall trees in the People’s Park. It backs on to a quiet corner of the park where a plaque marks the Bahais’ gift of a birch tree in 1985.
There is room to park several cars in the gravelled front garden, which has electronic gates and a pedestrian gate. The house is a minute or two’s walk from Sandycove Dart station on the other side of the road and a short walk through the Victorian-style People’s Park to the newly-restored baths on Dún Laoghaire’s seafront.
