£1.2m for villa on Sydenham Road

Residents of Sydenham Road, probably the best residential area in Dundrum, tend to hold on to their properties longer than most people in this suburb of Dublin so popular with families. Hamilton Osborne King is guiding £1.2 million (€1.52m) for a particularly spacious 3,200 sq ft late Victorian house with four bedrooms on Sydenham Road, to be auctioned on April 10th next.

The children of the couple who own Mopoon Villa, which is located close to the junction with Upper Kilmacud Road, near the centre of Dundrum village, have moved on. So after over two decades of living in the house, the couple are now set to move less than a mile away, to smaller accommodation.

Houses on this road, many of them tall period residences, seem to come to the market in groups. Sherry FitzGerald is currently selling two quite different properties on the same road, both with price tags of over £1 million (€1.27m).

The accommodation at Mopoon Villa, as in many late Victorian houses, is well-proportioned and bright. The entrance hallway is particularly elegant, with very ornate ceiling detail and two tall half-landing windows which catch the morning sun. The house is very well looked-after, decorated in a soft oranges-and-lemons colour theme.

The formal drawingroom and the diningroom are on either sides of the hallway, both with original marble fireplaces and decorative ceiling cornicing. The floors in these reception rooms and the hall have been stripped back to the original wide floorboards.

At a slightly lower level to the rear is the everyday family living area, with a country-style pine kitchen/ breakfastroom and a huge games room which would suit a number of uses.

French doors open from here to a pergola-roofed terrace and the garden. Also off the kitchen is a laundry room leading to a small cedar-floored conservatory, which in turn opens out to a west-facing sun deck. The games room, currently housing a large snooker table, has a vaulted timber-panelled ceiling and glass doors to the rear terrace.

Upstairs, off a wide landing, the main bedroom has a bank of fitted wardrobes and an en suite with double-sized shower and his-and-hers washhand basins. Two further bedrooms off this landing are both doubles. One room converted to a study has twin pull-down beds in a wall unit.

A fourth very large bedroom on the next half-landing overlooks the back garden. The family bathroom with corner bath and marble-topped units is accessed through a shelved linen room. The peach-coloured bath and washhand basin in this room are probably the only things a fashion-conscious new owner might change.

The gardens are well-tended and have the maturity of decades of growth. The south-east facing rear lawn is on two levels, bounded by a wall and with a magnificent curved cotoneaster hedge. There are well-clipped shrubs and a lawn at the front, while a wisteria by the front door almost reaches the decorative woodwork under the eaves.