Quarryman’s cottage cut into Killiney Hill

A country-style cottage near Killiney village, built in the early 1800s, has belonged to one family for more than 100 years. The current owner, who inherited the cottage from his uncle 40 years ago, used extraordinary ingenuity to extend and modernise the house built into the rock of Roche’s Hill, an area of wild heath between Killiney Hill and Killiney Golf Course.

Woodbine Cottage is one of the thatched cottages originally built for quarrymen at a time when local granite was being quarried to build piers for Dún Laoghaire harbour; it was one of the first houses built on Glenalua Road, a narrow road off Killiney Hill Road just before Killiney village. The owner’s family lived here for five generations from the late 1800s, buying the title of the cottage in 1918. Included in the owner’s memorabilia is a letter from 1916 granting the occupiers permission to travel from Killiney to Kingstown.

Now the owner and his wife hope to realise a long-held dream of moving to the country. Woodbine Cottage, a 117sq m (1,259sq ft) three-bedroom house, is for sale through Des Lalor Auctioneers for €550,000.

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Range Room

The couple decided to keep it country when they moved in: they put roof beams into the open-plan main room, called the “Range Room” because they kept the original small cast-iron range, and dug stone out of the back of the house to face the wall into which it’s recessed. Walls are white and pine doors set into archways open into the other downstairs rooms; a mahogany staircase leads to the bedrooms above.

An arched hedge and a small green gate open into the tiered front garden, kept private from the road by a tall hedge. A small Perspex-roofed sun porch with a built-in bench opens into the open-plan kitchen/livingroom/ diningroom. A pine-panelled breakfast bar divides the long narrow kitchen from the livingroom; built-in seating by the dining table conceals storage.

There is a good-sized sittingroom off the Range room, with a pine floor, an old mahogany fireplace and a bay window looking into the front garden. At the other side of the Range room, a door opens into small cloakroom and a toilet.

Wine cellar

Expanding the cottage involved making the very most of small spaces: a passage at the back of the house leads to a tiny study, a pantry, utility space, a family bathroom with bath and shower, even a small wine cellar. A covered side passage opens into the front garden. A pipe runs under the house to run off water from the rock face behind.

Upstairs, there are two smallish double bedrooms, one with fitted wardrobes, a loft bedroom where two children’s beds are built on a mezzanine, and a toilet.

The tiered front garden has a kitchen garden, a neat lawn and at the top, a patio looking down Glenalua Road towards the Wicklow hills. There’s another tiny lawn at the side of the house and a narrow passage into a two-level workshop.

There’s just enough space to park on the pavement in front of Woodbine Cottage’s small “motor house” on Glenalua Road, a garage originally designed for a motorbike which could be demolished to make more space for parking, suggests the agent.