Number 23 Garville Avenue in Rathgar, built in 1866 and home to the same family for more than 60 years, is a stately semidetached redbrick five-bedroom house with a warm heart.
The house, set well back from the road and bounded by a wall and a gate – widened in the past 20 years to allow cars to park on the gravelled driveway – sits on a wide plot that stretches southwards to Garville Drive. This highlights part of the property’s appeal, given the potential to follow the neighbours’ example and build a mews house, subject to planning permission.
The front door, in a single-storey entrance that’s offset to the right, opens into an L-shaped hall with the 12ft ceiling height that continues throughout the 204sq m (2,196sq ft) house. Immediately in front is a shower room with green-patterned glass above the door. To the left are the main reception rooms: two long sash windows in the large drawingroom look out to the front lawn. Many original features survive; in this room, the acanthus-leaf ceiling rose within a larger ring is particularly pretty, although, like much of the plasterwork, it needs to be freed from layers of paint. Large wooden doors open to the square diningroom, where a pale grey marble fireplace matches that in the front room.
Through glass doors and down a few steps is the lean-to conservatory, with tiled floor and plant-shelved wall. Also at this level are a quarry-tiled breakfastroom heated by an oil-fired Aga (the property is Ber-exempt), a small kitchen with cream-painted wooden units and, at the end of the return, a utility room. This area opens to the garden and it is easy to envisage, again subject to planning permission, how a family might reconfigure and extend this part of the house into a kitchen-livingroom with a big sunny side patio and still have a huge south-facing garden.
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There are trees along the edges of the grass, and a sweet old swing spans the central concrete path. Victor, the resident tortoise, picks up surprising speed towards the pedestrian gate and the large garage, which has an inspection pit below and a corrugated roof above. This opens to Garville Drive, where a variety of mews houses, including a pair behind numbers 17 and 19 Garville Avenue and a row of eight opposite, built by M&J Wallace, set a strong precedent for infill development.
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Upstairs, the first-floor return is framed by a decorative arch, and to the left there is a toilet. Beside this is a big double bedroom and, off this, another bedroom with a basin; it is tempting to imagine this bright wing done up as a main suite. Also on this level are a small storage area and a linen room, lit internally by the green glass seen from the hall and externally by windows in the side wall; this is plumbed and could become a family bathroom.
On the top landing are three further bedrooms, two doubles and a single, all floored with wide, dark-stained boards. The two at the front have sweet cast-iron fireplaces and bells to summon the maid; that at the back has a shower room cut out of one side.
Those looking to bring this house bang up to date will need time, money and an imaginative architect to navigate the challenge and privilege of upgrading this fine protected structure into a modern, forever family home. Number 23 Garville Avenue, located between Rathgar, Rathmines and Terenure villages and surrounded by schools, bus routes and sports facilities, is for sale through Mullery O’Gara with an asking price of €1.75 million.
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