New perspective on the hill in Killiney for €985,000

Knockbrack is a four-bedroom detached bungalow in a very secluded setting in Killiney. On the market since March with an asking price of €1.15 million, the price has this week dropped to €985,000 through agents Sherry FitzGerald.

The house is situated at the end of Glenalua Road, a cul-de-sac where modest pebble-dash houses give way to sizeable properties that sit on large plots of land as the road narrows to the width of a country lane.

Knockbrack is the last house on the road and occupies an acre of land. A steep drive takes you up to the 191sq m (2,055sq ft) house. The property faces south, looking across Dublin to Cherrywood and the city limits with the Dublin Mountains filling the widescreen vista. On a clear day you can see north to the Ballymun towers.

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Glass ceiling
Granite outcrops fill the hillside garden, as do Scots pines, heather and gorse. This being Killiney, the only element missing from the picture is a sea view.

The entrance hall has a glass ceiling and gives some sense of how more glazing would open up the house to its environment. Steps lead up to a sitting room where there is a pot-bellied stove and a pitch-pine vaulted ceiling, with doors opening out to a patio.

The kitchen is modest in size and has a small fireplace in the breakfast area. Adjacent is the formal dining room which has a south-facing box bay window. The next owner might think about amalgamating the two rooms into one big space to stream light in from three sides.

The house is spacious but some of the rooms don’t reflect the airy sense of escape that the setting provides. Three of the four bedrooms are in the original part of the house, which was built in the 1930s. Two of them have en-suite bathrooms. The house has an E1 Ber rating.

A creative architect could do something spectacular here, subject to planning. One option would be to look at raising the roof to add a second floor which would provide sea views that would complete the package.