Duo on Dartmouth to test market

Two terraced redbricks on controversial Dartmouth Square will be auctioned later this month writes Rose Doyle

Dublin 6: €3.5m:Dartmouth Square, Dublin 6, stately and Victorian, minutes from St Stephen's Green and close to the canal, is one of the capital's ideal locations.

With all this, it still manages to be a city square offering seclusion and privacy, albeit caught in controversy about planning and ownership of its green centre at the moment.

In what could be an interesting test of the market, two houses on the square will be auctioned later this month, both with slightly different AMVs.

Both are part of the elegant, two storey over garden level terrace on the south side of the square. Both were built in 1890 and both are in excellent, and heart-warming, condition.

Similar in size and with period features carefully preserved, they have distinctively different living styles and decor.

Number 65 has a pastel-coloured elegance and, with maximum light from rear windows and a Velux over the top landing, is a bright house.

In three apartments until 1997, when the owners renovated, it is now a congenial family home of 208.5sq m (2,245sq ft) with two reception rooms, three bedrooms, kitchen/ breakfastroom and family room.

It will be auctioned by Sherry FitzGerald on 30th March with an AMV of €3.5m.

The windows are original as are doors, floor boards and a pair of marble fireplaces.

In the ground floor reception rooms the timber flooring has been polished to a honey-coloured hue which, in the front facing living room, adds to the warmth of yellowy-cream walls and, in the rear dining room, becomes cool against pale green walls.

There are three bedrooms upstairs: two to the front and the main one, with en suite, to the rear. The garden has fruit trees.

Dublin 6: €3.7m:Number 55 Dartmouth Square has an exuberant style in which strong colours, carefully chosen, emphasise the sense of period in the high ceilings and cornicing, original sash windows (to the front only) marble and cast-iron fireplaces in most rooms and brass finger plates on original, panelled doors. Where finger plates, kitchen tiling or a even a fireplace had gone missing the owner "searched and scavaged" until she found authentic replacements.

This attention to detail shows in the four bedrooms, study, two main reception rooms, family room, kitchen/breakfastroom and sun room filling its 244sq m (2,625sq ft).

For sale through Gunne, 55 goes to auction on Wednesday 28th March with an AMV of €3.7m. The living heart of the house is at garden level where daffodil yellow walls warm a large, terracotta floored kitchen with polished pine centre island.

A sun room, added a year ago, extends into the Zen-like peace of a pebbled and planted rear garden with large old cherry blossom tree.

A guest bedroom, also extending off the kitchen, has an en suite. Once a family room, a front-facing room with deep red walls has become a dramatic dining room. More daffodil-coloured walls in the ground floor hallway highlight the simplicity of the original plasterwork.

The main reception rooms on this floor are painted a pale blue, have folding double doors between them and similar, marble fireplaces in each.

The stairs twist and turn on the ascent. On the first return it leads to a study, on the second to a bathroom with quirkily interesting, deep ledged window and a free-standing, cast iron bath.

The main, en suite bedroom, one of three off the main landing, extends across the width of the house and has deep yellow walls with plasterwork picked out in black and white.

A Victorian-style basin lends mood, two windows overlook the square and there is a cast-iron fireplace.

The other bedrooms are to the rear, both with Victorian-style basins and cast-iron fireplaces.