Dalkey garden a developer's delight at €7m

A house on two acres of gardens where Hugh Leonard's Da once worked as a gardener has development potential and a guide price of €7m, writes Orna Mulcahy, Property Editor

Santa Maria, a detached Victorian house on two acres at Cunningham Road in Dalkey, Co Dublin, is set to make over €7 million when it is auctioned by Jackson-Stops and Lisney on June 16th.

The house and its amazing gardens - said to stretch a quarter of a mile from the front gate to the back wall - will be known to fans of Hugh Leonard, whose autobiography Home Before Night gives a fascinating account of Dalkey in the 1940s. At that time his father was a gardener at Santa Maria, then known as Enderly, which was owned by the Jacobs, a prominent Quaker family.

Enderly was a mini estate, its gardens and greenhouses kept in pristine order by a team of workers who rolled the tennis course and croquet lawn, tended the roses and harvested the fruit and vegetables. The house and garden was also used in the making of Da, the film version of Hugh Leonard's play about his father, starring Martin Sheen.

After the second World War, Enderly was sold to the couturier Marjorie Boland, who changed the name to Santa Maria, a neat metaphor for decline of the Protestant ascendancy. In 1958 the Kennedy family bought Santa Maria for £5,000 and has lived there ever since. Their home, a former Quaker meeting house, is very much as it was then, with its fine reception rooms, numerous pantries and store rooms an original coach-house and garage.

Inevitably the grounds will be developed. The house is likely to keep some garden while the remaining land, which slopes up and away into the distance, could accommodate an apartment block or several houses with ease. Separate access to the rear section of the garden has been arranged from Cunningham Drive - although new owners will have to negotiate a price for the access separately - and architect's drawings have been prepared for a couple dozen houses. There is a slim chance that the property may be bought as a family home by a very wealthy individual, but it would be someone prepared to invest serious money in restoring and maintaining the garden, much of which has reverted to wilderness.

Standing high above the road, Santa Maria is a stately two-storey redbrick with a steep driveway leading to a large area of parking. The front door, at one side of the house, opens into a lofty tiled hallway that exudes a vaguely ecclesiastical feel. Off this entrance, is a wide hallway leading to the first of the reception rooms - a formal diningroom with a tall bay window looking down over Dalkey village towards the sea. From here double doors lead through to the drawingroom, and on to a third reception room, once called the ballroom.

All the rooms are well proportioned spaces with plenty of light from tall windows. The ballroom, used by the Kennedys as a library, has a fine white marble fireplace. It has a door through to a large conservatory, which also connects to the final reception room which is the loveliest of all with its twin sash windows looking up to the garden.

From the hallway steps lead down to the working part of the house - a whole series of rooms that includes a breakfastroom, large kitchen with Aga, a pantry, scullery, coal cellar into which coal was poured through a hole above; wine cellars, wash room and more.

Upstairs, the first landing, with its doors to the garden, also gives access to two rooms - the original linen room with its built-in cupboards warmed by the central heating pipes and beyond a lovely big bedroom. The first floor has three large bedrooms, including the main room with is superb seaward views and characterful en suite with pink roses rambling over the bathroom suite, and underlit steps leading up to the bath.

A narrow corridor off the upper landing leads to three further bedrooms on two levels, and there's also a separate steep staircase rising to a big attic room. The entire house awaits a complete makeover, but most of its original features are intact from the fine timber doors and carved architraves, to fireplaces, stained glass details, and working shutters. The adjoining coach-house has stable stalls for three horses, and a fine loft overhead.

The garden is almost completely overgrown beyond the first stretch of lawn - formerly the tennis court - and the rose garden with its Victorian rotating garden house. At one stage the upper reaches of the grounds had a swimming pool, but now it is hidden beneath a canopy of shrubs and trees.

For a virtual tour of this property click on nicemove.ie