Rare family home in Georgian district

Number 6 Herbert Street is a rare thing in Dublin’s a business district, a Georgian townhouse that has been a family home since it was built.

When Walter and Bettie Doyle-Kelly got married in 1952, the young couple were given a wedding present of the five-storey terraced house. It had been in Walter’s family – his father, a captain in the Indian Army bought it and the houses on either side in the 1930s.

They had three children and Walter, a medical consultant, used the front room as his consulting room – his well-polished brass nameplate is still on the hall door – seeing patients there, while being just a stroll from Sir Patrick Dun’s, one of the hospitals where he also worked and Trinity College where he taught.

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60th wedding anniversary

There were weddings in the garden, and christenings and birthdays over the decades and the couple celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in the house. Their deaths within months not too long after that means it is now for sale.

Sherry FitzGerald have put a price of €1.3 million on the 445 sq m (4,789 sq ft) house.

The rest of the houses on Herbert Street are in office use and it’s likely, given the superb and long-established business location just off Baggot Street beside the Peppercanister Church – that investors with a mind to converting number 6 will be interested.

However, and there’s a romance in this notion, it just might find a buyer looking to keep it in family use, one who has the deep pockets and patience for an extensive renovation. What might encourage that idea is that viewers will have the rare chance to see an impressive Georgian house between the canals, lived in as a comfortable family home.

Symmetrical layout

In true Georgian style it has a symmetrical layout with two principal rooms on each level, on the upper levels the room to the front spans the width of the house with two windows overlooking the street.

At hall level – the fanlight over the front door is still there as are most other original period features – that consulting room is to the front and there’s a formal diningroom to the back; the gracious drawingroom is where it should be – upstairs at the front of the house, with a double bedroom to the back, and there are four more similarly arranged rooms on the top two floors with the ceilings getting lower the higher up you go.

The kitchen is in the hall floor return with the bathroom in the return directly above it.

There’s a one-bedroom flat in the front part of the basement, used by some of the children in the family as they got older and also rented out – at modest rates, and I should know I lived there for a time 20 years ago. Now looking at it, it’s clear it hasn’t been used in a long time, it’s the only part of the house that feels desolate, that no longer has a homely feel.

When I lived there the coach house was in original condition, again even two decades ago this was a rarity in an area where mews houses have long been a feature. This has since been developed into a mews house and is not part of the sale.

There is a decent-sized patio rear garden with access from basement level.