Since the record €58m sale of a house on Shrewsbury Road this summer, values on the road have soared. Orna Mulcahy, Property Editor, reports.
It was only a matter of time before the €58 million sale of Walford on Shrewsbury Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, flushed out another expensive property on the road and now here it is: Belmont, a rambling 650sq m (7,000sq ft), seven-bedroom house on two-thirds of an acre of grounds complete with indoor swimming pool and putting green. The asking price is €30 million.
Belmont, which stands directly opposite Walford, is by far the finer house, built in Edwardian times for the Palgrave Murphys, a wealthy shipping family, and lavishly refurbished and extended in the mid-1990s by the current owners.
However, while the main attraction of Walford was its 1.8 acres with development potential, whoever buys Belmont will be investing in a family home. It is not therefore likely to make the same dramatic price as Walford (the sale of which is not due to complete until next month).
Selling agent Tom Day of Lisney describes it as "the best house in Dublin". Even so, the valuation has increased significantly since the sale of Walford in June. Last year, when it was first rumoured to be coming on the market, Belmont was said to be worth €17-€20 million. The owner is already thought to have turned down an offer of €25 million.
Dating from 1904, it's a house that's made for Christmas, with its red-tiled roof, half-timbered front and stained glass windows. Set well back from the road and screened by trees, it has excellent frontage and both drive-in and pedestrian gates.
There's an integrated garage and plenty of off-street car-parking. Inside, a panelled vestibule with its original telephone room leads through to a soaring double height hall with a minstrels gallery overhead, French doors to the garden and double doors leading through to a very fine drawingroom with deep bay windows at either end.
The livingrom is a large but very comfortable room decorated in an opulent antique style. Across the hall is a superb diningroom with beamed walls and ceiling and a monumental carved timber mantelpiece. Also off the hall is a small lobby leading to a comfortable tobacco-coloured study with floor-to-ceiling shelves and cupboards and an impressive fireplace. Further along is a large playroom with plasma screen.
The kitchen is part of a large extension that runs down the side of the garden but blends in perfectly with the original design of the house, down to the carved doors with their leaded glass oval insets.
It includes a pantry and utility room, an en suite staff bedroom, and the mellow country-style kitchen with its twin Aga cookers and big open fireplace. Beyond the kitchen is a conservatory, and then the indoor pool with its cathedral style ceiling.
The curvy pool has enough tiled space around it for a party, and there's also a sauna, steam room, shower and changing rooms.
Upstairs, the minstrels gallery landing is a little low ceilinged, but all six bedrooms are generous doubles and most are en suite. The main bedroom suite includes a dressing room and a large and luxurious bathroom. A secondary staircase leads back down to the kitchen end of the house.
The back garden is surprisingly private with a belt of trees screening its central lawn. There is a barbeque area, a playhouse with a view over the Chinese embassy on Ailesbury Road, and lushly planted borders.
The beauty of Belmont is in the detail - the original polished pine floors, the enamelled hearts on the finger plates of each door, the leaded windows, the masterly wood carving throughout.
Viewing, needless to say, is strictly by appointment.
