“I love the light in this house,” says the owner of 82 Garville Avenue Upper in Rathgar, Dublin 6, who has lived here since 1978. Located at the end of a redbrick terrace, named Connaught Terrace on the Ordnance Survey, it benefits from windows on the west side, including two on the stairs, and a rooflight over the top flight. And from each of the four levels you can see through windows on another.
With 255sq m (2,750sq ft), this is a substantial house, very well maintained since the owner and her family bought it in its hundredth year. It was never in flats, she says, and original features including plasterwork, fireplaces and floorboards are present and perfect. It is now for sale through Mullery O’Gara with an asking price of €1.6 million.
The garden, with a long lawn to buffer the house from the road, is defined at the front by the end of an unbroken run of Victorian railings and at the side by an old wall along a grassy lane, which has a metal gate that renders it accessible only to about 20 keyholders.
The pretty facade has a double brick arch over the door, and four darker string courses. The baby-blue front door with its original bell opens to reveal the soaring hall and the light defying the pouring rain. The cornice, topping the 12ft ceilings, is a lovely openwork ivy pattern that continues into the two big reception rooms on the right.
The front room has a high-relief leafy ceiling centrepiece and a whitish marble fireplace with pretty tiled inset and a servants’ bell beside it. A deep bay window at the front, another benefit of ending the terrace, looks left towards Rathgar Avenue and right towards Brighton Square and Terenure Road North.
Double doors open from here to the diningroom, which has a dramatic black fireplace and more botanical plasterwork. Both reception rooms have original floorboards, and ornate radiators sourced in Italy.
Creamy porcelain tiles in the hall continue down five steps past a guest toilet and understairs storage, and floor the huge kitchen/diningroom. This occupies the original return and a double-width extension built in 2006. As well as original windows in the side wall, it has French doors to the garden, another glass door to the gravelled yard below the diningroom window, and six Veluxes overhead.
The hand-built solid wood kitchen units are painted off-white and topped with black granite. There is a sink and dishwasher in the island, and the original fireplace houses a vast four-oven Aga.
This stays on all year and warms the main bedroom, which lies directly above it in the first-floor return. It has built-in wardrobes and a lovely black cast-iron fireplace. Beside this is the main bathroom, recently redone with blue and white starry tiles and blue panelling, and space for a free-standing bath as well as a corner shower. During this work insulation was added throughout the house, which is Ber-exempt.
Up on the next landing are a study and three bedrooms of which the best one, at the front, has a bay window that draws southerly light.
The fifth bedroom is at the top of the house, full of well-considered storage and with a shower en suite. From here you can see across treetops, rooftops and local church spires to the city. “You’re living in town but it’s like being in the country,” says the owner, contrasting the abundance of local amenities and her average four-minute wait for a bus with her grandchildren’s joy at picking blackberries down the lane.
There’s a vehicular gate to this lane from a patio/parking area at the end of the 95ft garden, which is mostly in grass. A two-storey coach-house of 38sq m (410sq ft) offers mews potential, subject to planning permission.
Just northeast of this, farther along Garville Lane Upper, is a light industrial “backland development” site of 0.18 hectares. Within the past month, after a long planning process (reference 4000/23), EWR Rathgar Ltd, Ross Dunne and Joseph Dunne have secured permission, subject to 12 conditions, to build seven four-bedroom houses designed by DMVF Architects.
