Detached grandeur with wraparound gardens for €1.975m

The houses in Foxrock, or the ones on the oldest and most desirable roads, Westminster, Brighton and Torquay, are substantial period family homes with terrific gardens and while they all face on to the suburb’s main roads with plenty of passing traffic they’re well back from them.

It must be one of the few Dublin suburbs where so many of the houses have names not numbers.

When they were first built in the mid-to-late 1800s, encouraged by the arrival of the railway for ease of commuting into Dublin city, they were colonised by the burgeoning Dublin middle class, and by the 1970s, when the owners of Glenshee on Torquay Road first moved in, the suburb was the last word in posh.

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They bought in 1978 when they returned from abroad and while keeping the period features did a major renovation – the signs are still there in the two large bathrooms featuring designer suites – both with bidets and semicircular baths, one wine-coloured, the other a rarely seen midnight blue.

The 257sq m (2,766sq ft) detached house on half an acre has been a family home and now that it’s time to downsize, Glenshee is for sale through Lisney for €1.975 million.

Generous garden

Glenshee was built in the 1880s, one of five identical, handsome-looking, detached, two-storey houses. It originally had an even larger garden but decades ago the end of it was hived off by previous owners for a bungalow.

The tall bordering hedge has long since matured and that house is obscured from view.

The existing half-acre garden wraps around the house and is clearly the passion of the owner. It is divided into sections that include a substantial lawned area across the width of the rear, a vegetable garden and an atmospheric sunny courtyard to the side that’s bordered by tall granite walls, with a water feature in the middle and accessed from patio doors in the large eat-in kitchen.

There are two principal reception rooms, one on either side of the hall.

The room on the right is used as a formal diningroom, the larger room on the left is a gracious bright living room with a bay window and another window looking out on the side garden.

Both of these rooms have high ceilings and attractive period fireplaces with beautiful gilded period overmantles .

There’s a familyroom at the rear and the eat-in kitchen. In more recent years a series of small pantries were opened up to make a good-sized utility room opening onto the back garden.

There are five bedrooms, all doubles and two have en suites and dressing areas.

The front garden, behind electric gates, has 34m road frontage – the site is very wide and there is a garage to one side and the courtyard on the other side with parking to the front for several cars.