Detached three-bed in Clonskeagh’s leafy Louvain for €995,000

The Ardilea estate off Roebuck Road in Clonskeagh was built in the 1960s along the lines of American suburbia. Dublin housebuilding lore has it that a developer called O’Callaghan was so inspired by the large suburban houses he saw on a trip to the US, with their open front gardens, picture windows, stone cladding and arched porches, that he brought the style home. In naming the roads he was inspired by the great universities of the world.

Louvain Glade, built later in the 1980s, is a small cul-de-sac off Louvain and number 2, which is now for sale, was built in 1987 for its owner in the garden of her parents’ house on Louvain.

For a three-bedroom home, number 2 is large at 170sq m (1,830sq ft) and even at that, just two of the bedrooms – both doubles, one en suite – are upstairs, along with the family bathroom. Originally the house had an integrated garage to the front but this was converted in 2014 to create that third bedroom. So the emphasis is on the living accommodation with a large reception room to the front, a kitchen, breakfast room to the rear and a dining room. There’s also a small study, a utility and wet room.

In recent years when houses in Ardilea have changed hands, it has often been via an executor’s sale, as is the case here. They have then undergone major makeovers, especially those 1960s properties, involving extending the interior accommodation and updating the exterior look of the house.

As number 2 is a detached property on a mature garden, buyers may look to extend and even if they don’t go for the radical renovation seen elsewhere on the roads in the leafy estate, they are likely at least to upgrade the dated kitchen and seek to improve the D1 Ber.

Number 2 Louvain Glade is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald, asking €995,000.