A large home sheltered by high stone walls on Brennanstown Road in South Co Dublin has a breezy air about it. Its decoration, mostly in muted shades of beige and white, is clean and unfussy. Minimalist is how the home's owner, artist Louise Mansfield, describes it and it is. But it's still a comfortable family home that she and her husband, retired dentist Theo Hanley, are selling, simply because their four children have grown up and left home.
Shirburn, a 381sq m (4,100sq ft) detached five-bedroom house on three-quarters of an acre, is, she says “too big for us to rattle around in”. It is now for sale by private treaty through Daphne L Kaye, with an asking price of €1.95 million.
The minimalist design is a perfect setting for Louise’s art, exhibited on walls everywhere in Shirburn. It’s all created in the studio and gallery the couple built when they extended the house they’ve lived in since 1989. This is a large, very bright room with double doors opening into the garden.
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Shirburn is in Carrickmines, about halfway between Cabinteely and Foxrock, up a long private driveway off Brennanstown Road. It’s a busy road, but once inside the gates, the traffic noise fades away.
The original house dates from around the 1940s/1950s; Louise and her husband extended it by knocking down a garage and building the studio and a large kitchen-cum-conservatory that wrap around the house at the back.
It has an unconventional split-level layout. The front door of the house opens into a square front hall, floored with quarry tiles. There’s a small home office and a guest bathroom at one side; a side passage leads straight from here to the kitchen at the back. A short flight of beige-carpeted stairs at the left of the hall leads up to a wide drawingroom. French windows here open onto a balcony overlooking the back garden and another short flight of stairs leads down into the diningroom, which opens back into the side passage leading to the kitchen and conservatory.
Family room
More stairs lead down to a family room, perfect for teenagers, with a door opening onto yet another patio.
The kitchen and conservatory are the heart of the house. The kitchen is wide, with polished granite countertops and breakfast bar and a big dining area opening through French doors onto a patio. Glazed folding doors open into a huge period-style conservatory with a beech timber floor.
Upstairs, the five bedrooms are doubles, two with en suites. The main bedroom has a walk-in wardrobe and a smart fully-tiled shower room.
The house sits in the middle of its very private garden, with large sloping lawns, trees and lots of patio areas to catch the sun as it moves around the garden, all sheltered by those tall stone walls. Shirburn is a five-minute drive from Cornelscourt in one direction, and about the same to the Luas at Carrickmines in the other.
