Bay windows, high ceilings and ornate details in Dún Laoghaire

Joe Doyle has owned 9 Royal Terrace East for 40 years, since buying it for £12,000 in 1976. He is especially familiar with its original features which he has preserved or, where there were gaps in the plasterwork, had remoulded. In nine flats when he bought and turned it into a family home, he rented it out again, this time in three apartments later, when the family moved to Co Wicklow. It became a family home once more when the Doyles moved back from Wicklow and then, a few years ago, Doyle and his son began a major refurbishment.

“We’ve worked it over from top to bottom. I’ve had new plasterwork moulded to match the old, done by the Old Mould Company. All as it should be. There’s no good trying to make a Victorian house into a Georgian, or vice versa.” He has been equally exacting about detail throughout, although the job still has a way to go. Alone now, Doyle says he doesn’t need “a house this big any more” and is downsizing.

The new owner will move into a bright, solidly made home with generous proportions, wide stairs, high ceilings, a refurbishment more than half finished, a floor area of 313sq m (3,369sq ft) to play with and a self-contained apartment at garden level.

A splendidly high-ceilinged, spacious and ornately plastered first-floor room, with a three-sided bay window overlooking Royal Terrace park, would make a dramatically handsome drawing/ livingroom. A ground-floor bedroom could become a kitchen, a front livingroom a diningroom. It is all to play for, just awaiting care, imagination and a completed refurb.

Lush gardens

Royal Terrace consists of two terraces, west and east, facing each other from opposite sides of a large railed park where there are dogs, trees and grassy walks. The terraces were built in the 1850s, the developer was one

Francis J Nugent

; the first owners, Doyle says, “civil servants and the middle classes”.

Agent DNG is asking €1.1 million for what is a large two-storey house with three rear returns, four bedrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen and family bathroom. The garden-level apartment has an approx 93sq m (1,000sq ft) floor space with livingroom, kitchen/breakfastroom, two bedrooms and shower room.

There are gardens front and rear – that to the front is especially lush with an old cordyline (planted when the Doyles first moved in), pampas grass and fuchsia. A conservatory at the end of the rear garden is a work in progress and there is rear vehicular access via a private laneway.

The ground floor rooms have 13ft high ceilings and long windows with working shutters. The plasterwork in the large hallway is impressively elaborate, all of it lovingly refurbished. The kitchen, to the rear, needs modernising but is fitted and fit for purpose.