Large Blackrock house on a site that’s big enough for two seeks €1.95m

One of the owners of this large detached house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, is emotionally attached to the house she grew up in but agrees that it could be pulled down and redeveloped. Number 50 Woodlands Park sits on 0.3 acres in an estate of 1940s houses off the N11-end of Mount Merrion Avenue, in a neighbourhood where there’s a fair amount of infill development going on.

Potential buyers of the house her father bought soon after it was built in 1949 could include a family, who might extend it or demolish and rebuild the property, or a developer, who could fit two large houses on the site, according to an architect who is married to one of the owners.

She is one of five children who grew up in the house, where she enjoyed playing in the large garden. Their mother never wanted to leave her home and was gardening up to four weeks before her recent death at the age of 94.

Now 50 Woodlands Park, Blackrock, Co Dublin, a 195sq m (2,131sq ft) five-bed detached house is for sale for €1,950,000 through Lisney. It is an executor sale.

The house is quite liveable in as it stands: the layout is L-shaped, with a door at the side opening into a parquet-floored hall. Off it, there are three rooms facing the front garden – a small television room and a long drawing room, opening through a wide arch into a dining room – as well as a downstairs toilet.

The drawing room has a fireplace with a marble mantelpiece, a wide bay window and a timber floor. There are double doors from the dining room on to a cobbled terrace at the front and a single door opening into a large family room at the back. This has a single door opening into the back garden and another door into the kitchen. This is a small narrow room, looking on to the back garden.

Upstairs are five bedrooms, four of them doubles and all with fitted wardrobes, and a family bathroom. The main bedroom has a good-sized en-suite shower room; another bedroom has French doors opening on to a balcony that runs the width of the house, overlooking the front garden.

The gardens front and back were well cared for by the late owner: in the back, a patio leads to a lawn surrounded by clipped low hedging; there’s a circular hedged feature in the front lawn. A front drive has room to park a number of cars and there’s a separate garage next to the house.

The architect married to one of the owners believes that two large houses – like those developed by Bartra Property on nearby Glenart Avenue – could fit on to the site of number 50, subject to planning permission.

Three houses were built a few years ago on the site of number 43 Woodlands Park, each selling in 2018 for between €1.7 million and €1.8 million. Number 45, a house on 0.72 acres, sold for €4 million in 2018: Bartra Property has planning permission for 26 apartments on the site, although no work has begun there.