Long front and back gardens are a notable feature of houses built by developer John Kenny in Mount Merrion in the 1930s and a five-bedroom home now on the market has both. Inniscarra, a 209sq m (2,249sq ft) semidetached five-bed on a fifth of an acre, has a long private back garden sheltered by tall hedges and a front garden with lots of space to park beside the lawn.
Mount Merrion, where Limerick developer Kenny and his business partner John du Moulin bought land in the 1920s and 1930s to build modern houses, was among Dublin’s first suburbs. Kenny houses were all-electric and designed for convenience.
It’s clear that number 5 Greygates – a road of houses at the very front of Mount Merrion – is a Kenny-built house: it has the signature white stippled exterior with bow windows on one side and a roof sloping down at the other, over what would have originally been a garage. It’s for sale through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty for €1.55 million. It has a C2 Ber rating.
The vendors bought number 5 in 2006 and extended it at the back, creating a large L-shaped open-plan dining, living and kitchen area. A stained-glass front door opens into a small front hall with what looks like an original, somewhat scuffed, parquet floor. On the left, a door opens into a study that’s also accessed from the kitchen area.
A door on the right opens into a sittingroom where the wide, six-paned bow window looks on to the front garden. It has a coal-effect gas fire, a painted timber fireplace and a wide plank walnut floor.
Glazed French doors open from the end of the front hall and more French doors from the sittingroom into the open-plan space. This has a high (about 10.5ft) ceiling and is very bright, with walls and built-in units coloured mostly cream/white. Two very wide floor-to-ceiling glazed sliding doors open directly on to the back patio.
Built-in cabinets and shelves line the wall on both sides of a log-effect gas fireplace. The whole open-plan space is floored with a wide-plank walnut floor, a little scuffed in the kitchen area. The kitchen has glossy cream units, and a unit that’s more isthmus than island separates the kitchen from the living area. Like the counter, it’s topped with pale Silkstone, a porcelain-like, hard-wearing material.
A utility room and a downstairs shower room open off the kitchen, with a door in a hallway to an outside side passage. A sliding pocket door opens into the downstairs study, with its pretty arched window at the front of the house.
Stairs on the left of the hall divide at the top, with a good-sized family bathroom on the left and four bedrooms on the right. The main bedroom is a good-sized double and, like the sittingroom below, has a wide bow window. There’s another double bedroom at the back, looking over the tall trees in gardens on The Rise. The two other bedrooms are smaller and both have a couple of steps down to spaces used as work or study areas. A large bedroom in the converted attic has built-in shelves and wardrobes and a small en suite shower room.
At the back of the house is a sandstone patio and a long lawn bordered with mature shrubs. A path at the side leads to two garden sheds, one used as a home gym. There’s lots of room to park in the front garden.
Greygates is a cul-de-sac at the very front of Mount Merrion, running parallel to the N11: it’s a sharp turn left at the very beginning off The Rise, the suburb’s central road. It’s part-shielded from the N11 by a bank of tall trees and a low stone wall, and it’s only a cul-de-sac for vehicles – it’s a few minutes’ walk from Greygates to a pavement and a bus stop on the N11, which leads into Dublin city centre.
