A secret garden is a surprise attraction at the back of a house in Blackrock, Co Dublin: a swing is tied to an old apple tree at the centre of a triangle of lawn hidden behind a tall hedge off the main garden. The daughter of the vendor remembers her delight at finding the garden when the family moved in when she was seven.
That was 20 years ago. Now Errigal, 1 Rowan Park Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin, a 175sq m (1,884sq ft) detached four-bed dormer bungalow, is for sale through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty, for €1.35 million.
The house, built in the 1930s, is in good condition, with smart new bathrooms upstairs and period features, such as doors with tall panels, picture rails and ceiling coving. However, new owners are likely to modernise the kitchen and there’s plenty of room to do so. Its Ber is D2.
A gravel path leads through an arch over a tiled entrance porch to the front door: it opens into a bright, timber-floored, double-height entrance hall. A room on the left is currently a diningroom, a wide maple-floored room with a wide bow window, deep red walls and a feature wall with striking floral wallpaper.
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A room on the right of the hall is currently a double bedroom with a walk-in wardrobe (with a porthole window) off it; it could be a home office or cosy TV room.
The livingroom, which is next to the kitchen at the back of the house, is a wide room with deep green walls and a timber floor, two large windows and a glazed door that opens on to the back garden.
The kitchen/breakfastroom has white units, timber countertops and a tile-pattern linoleum floor. It opens into a Perspex-roofed space at the side of the house, off which are a toilet and laundry room. It runs from the front to the back of the house with a door into the garden, another door opening into a large garage, which is now used for storage, and another door opening into the front driveway. There’s plenty of room for new owners to extend into this space, creating a modern kitchen/dining/living area looking into the back garden.
Upstairs there are three bedrooms and the family bathroom: the main bedroom has a timber floor, high ceiling and two Velux windows, built-in wardrobes with charcoal doors and an en suite installed last year. There are two other double bedrooms, one at the front and one at the back of the house. A new family bathroom has a bath and black-and-white tiled floor.
Outside, a back patio opens on to a wide, well-kept lawn bordered by tall hedges. A door opens into the secret garden at the bottom of the garden.
There’s room to park in a gravelled driveway next to the front lawn.
Errigal is one of about 20 houses in a cul-de-sac on the corner of Rowan Park Avenue and Rowan Park, a stretch of road that’s variously (and confusingly) called Clonkeen, Dean’s Grange and Stradbrook. There’s a bus stop just across the road and it’s not far from here to the Blackrock bypass.
