Little and large in Greystones for €749,000 and €395,000

Underneath Greystones’ old railway bridge arch on Victoria Road is a small private development of five one-off houses. Number three is a 1970s bungalow that has been refurbished by the current owners over their decade long tenure.

The property has been extensively renovated during that time and includes new windows and a new kitchen that was installed only last year. The owners resprayed its oak doors a fashionable shade of grey, installed anthracite-coloured laminate countertops and mood, task and kicker board lighting. A dark lino covers the previous tiled floor.

They converted the garage into a TV room, a step-down space situated off the contemporary coloured kitchen. A back porch connects the utility room to the rear of the kitchen with the TV room.

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Hawthorns, Trafalgar Road

Across the hall is a sizeable living room with a gas fire and sliding doors that open out to a sandstone patio. The garden wraps around two sides of the house and includes mature Scots pine trees, seated suntraps and several carp ponds. The carp are the owner’s pride and joy and not for sale, his wife says.

Gorgeous attic
There are four double bedrooms on the first floor which all lead off a very bright and spacious landing which has a seated area that the owner likes to escape to. The bedrooms all have built-in wardrobes. In one, a large box bay window has been forshortened to make the room feel more private and less overlooked. The space to be gained here could be put to good use housing a small sofa or desk. The master bedroom is a nice room with a good-sized windowed shower en-suite bathroom.

The converted attic is gorgeous. The couple use it as an office. It has a big picture window that looks across the train tracks to Greystones Harbour. It is one of the house’s best features.

The 218sq m (2,347sq ft) house is set on about one third of an acre and asking €749,000 through agents DNG. Number 4 the Arch, a considerably smaller four-bedroom detached property of 179sq m (1,926sq ft) went on the market in 2011 with an asking price of €720,000, and is understood to have gone sale agreed well below that figure last July.

The Arch backs onto the raised train tracks that carry the Dart, inter-city and freight trains.

Greystones has always been a home from home for Manchester-based second generation Irish lawyer Kevin Finnigan who has been holidaying there since he was a child when his father, an emigrant who left Ireland in the 1930s, bought a property in the fishing village. Fourteen years ago Finnigan, charmed by Hawthorns, a bijou two-storey period house of just 67 square metres (721sq ft) hidden off Trafalgar Road, bought the place.

The property is completely private and hidden from view. It’s accessed by a vehicular gate. A lovely mosaic tiled glass porch opens into a small hall. The sitting room is to the right and has a small stone fireplace and a glass door leading directly out to the garden.

The kitchen is on the other side of the hall. The cupboards have been hand-painted by abstract landscape artist Mick Gemmell who is based further south in Newcastle.

Upstairs there are two bedrooms. The master is a charming space with dual aspect windows, the bay window overlooks the adjoining property’s back garden and has views of the harbour.

Cliff walk
While there is a set of bunk beds in the second bedroom there is probably room for a queen-size bed.

There is vehicular and pedestrian access onto Trafalgar Road, a street that agent

Nick Crawford describes as “the Coliemore Road of Greystones”. The La Touche Hotel, a spectre of a Victorian building, blights the road. The property has been empty for years.

The house is two minutes from the harbour, its new marina which has 130 berths and South Beach, where Finnigan used to swim every day.

Finnigan also liked to do the cliff walk over the headland to Bray. In the evenings he liked to walk down to Dann’s Bar in The Beach House for refreshment and some music. Finnigan, now 60, doesn’t get to spend as much time in Greystones as he used to and is selling up.

The house is small but there is room, subject to planning permission, to extend out to the front and side to make it more family friendly.

The south by southwest-facing garden is on average 9m wide and 37m long. Any prospective family will love the fact that house is almost opposite St Brigid’s national school and is around the corner from St David’s secondary school, which with its picture windows and seascapes must boast the most distracting views in Ireland.

The house is asking €395,000 through Crawfords.