Garden is glory of a real original

Ballsbridge: €3.5m  The gardens of number 7 Wellington Road in Ballsbridge, front and rear, are long and packed with botanical pleasures which capture the time and mood of the house itself exactly.

Built in the mid-19th century, it is typically tall and terraced, has been much appreciated by a small number of owners over the years and has most of its original features intact.

Planning permission for a mews site at the end of the 150 ft-long rear garden could be either reactivated or applied for anew.

Agent Jackson-Stops , which is looking after the sale, is quoting a guide of €3.5 million in advance of the auction on May 19th.

Number 7 has in recent years been lived in as two separate accomodations, while the garden level has been a separate living area for longer. The entire house could easily be restored to its original layout but new owners would probably need to add a full working kitchen.

With a floor area of 287 sq m (3,100 sq ft), the house has five bedrooms and three reception rooms.

Original features such as fireplaces, sash windows with shutters, timber floors, cornicing and ornate brass knobs on panelled internal doors have all been kept carefully intact.

The entrance hallway is everything you'd expect it to be with highly ornate plasterwork picked out in white against terracotta and a dado rail. An arch at the half way mark frames the stairs beyond as well as a second arch on the lower return.

The main reception rooms run the length of the house. Long windows back and front fill the space between with light and folding double doors between reach from ceiling to floor.

There are centre roses and cornicing and, in the front drawingroom, a marble fireplace inset with petrol blue tiles.

A kitchen has been fitted into a corner of the rear diningroom area and the cast-iron fireplace removed from its chimney breast and refitted in an upstairs bedroom.

On the lower hallway return there is a shower room/utility room with a wash-hand basin, toilet and shower. There is also a study with walls packed with bookshelves; from here, a glazed door leads to steps down to the garden. On the return going upstairs there is a guest toilet with a wash-hand basin and a circular window.

A fully fitted kitchen on this level has a window to the side and a door leading down more stairs to the rear garden.

An attractive, arched window above the first floor landing echoes the arch below it leading to the return. One of the three bedrooms off the landing is in use as an elegant diningroom, another as a sittingroom, the latter with the addition of the original fireplace from the downstairs diningroom. The third bedroom has an en suite bathroom, picture rail and shuttered sash windows over the rear garden.

The garden apartment has a long hallway with dining area, a livingroom with tiled fireplace and sliding patio doors to an enclosed private patio. There are two bedrooms, one with a cast-iron fireplace. The small kitchen is to the rear and so is the bathroom.

An original coach door gives access via a laneway to the 150ft long back garden where there is crazy paving, pear, plum and apple trees, circular beds and high granite walls with ivy and clematis. The front garden has similar delights and, half way up the sweep of granite entrance steps, a covered coalhole which is one of the few such still intact in the area.