Gardens all the way down to the sea at Howth

Glenlion House stands near the edge of Howth Head, just up the road from Baily lighthouse with wide open views of Dublin Bay. Eivlín Roden reports

An impressive 4.75-acre pie-shaped slice of Howth Head with private beach, extensive gardens, three-bedroom house and one-bedroom chalet is for sale by public tender with an AMV of €6.5 million through Ganly Walters on June 28th.

Glenlion House is close to Baily Lighthouse and commands panoramic views across Dublin Bay to Bray Head. Tucked away off Thormanby Road, the house is reached by a long avenue zigzagging down towards the shore.

From every angle there are stunning views of the sea. The site includes the Lion's Head promontory immortalised in Joyce's Ulysses: 'No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head'.

This property was developed by Professor Bailey Butler of UCD from the 1920s and includes an orchard, vegetable garden and a wonderful classical Roman garden which he modelled on the ruins of Pompeii: it includes pieces of old columns, Corinthian capitals, curved stone seating and carved tablets inset in a half wall, all placed to take advantage of the spectacular setting.

All the gardens are overgrown, but the basic structures are still there.

The 1950s 216sq m (2,325sq ft) house has a suite of reception rooms, including a large sittingroom with windows looking over the garden to the sea, a study and a further sittingroom with marble fireplace and parquet floors.

There are two bedrooms on this floor, the large main one with a sweeping view to the bay and a walk-in dressingroom, and the second, also a big room, with an en suite and a window looking onto the garden.

The kitchen has a door leading to the garden, utility room and walk-in storage cupboard.

Outside there is ample car-parking space and nearby a one-bedroom house with a kitchen, bathroom and large sitting/diningroom.

There are lots of quirky details in the grounds, such as arched stone steps leading to the roof of the main house (without railings) and moulded stone kerbs along the pathways.

Behind the house there is a whole bank of succulent plants which, from a distance, look just like grass and any number of other specimen plants.

In the past people have bought such properties and built more imposing contemporary houses on these wonderful sites, as John McColgan and Moya Doherty did recently at nearby Dane's Hollow.

But it would be a pity if the new owners didn't try to restore the gardens in the way they were originally planned, keeping all the bits and pieces collected lovingly over nearly a century.