Leeson Street lady-in-waiting

Number 17 Leeson Street Upper is a grande dame three-storey-over-basement property that had been in flats but reverted to a family home in 2007 under the watchful eye of conservation architect Alistair Lindsay of Lindsay Conservation, who consulted on Carton House, Kilkee and Dunboyne Castles and the Unitarian Church.

The house is situated near the Methodist Centenary Church on the corner of Leeson Park. While it was renovated during the Tiger era, the result is restrained and graceful, and lets the fine, mid-19th century property’s original features sing, starting with the fine plasterwork ceiling and corbels in the entrance hall on whose restoration the owner spent €60,000. Lindsay was unable to discover the name of the stuccodore but describes the work as “good” and “typical of its period”.

Cornice plasterwork
The decorative work continues on roundels that lead the eye up the stairs and also into the hall-level interconnecting reception rooms where the new and matching shiny white marble fireplaces jar slightly with the tasteful restoration. These rooms have a ceiling height of 10 feet. During refurbishment, the windows were replaced with sash styles without shutters.

The impressive master bedroom is at the front on the first floor. Here the ceilings are 12 feet high and their enriched cornice plasterwork wouldn’t look out of place atop a wedding cake. The room has a black marble fireplace. To add an en suite shower room, space was taken from the back bedroom, which remains a double but no longer has its original sense of scale.

On the second floor there are two more bedrooms: a fine double with a shower en suite to the front that has dual aspect windows overlooking the church and Leeson Street; and a back bedroom that looks up Dartmouth Road and across to the Dublin Mountains.

The kitchen is at garden level and occupies the entire limestone-covered floor. Here the floor-to-ceiling height is just over eight feet.

French doors lead out to the granite clad, northwest-facing elevated garden. The low maintenance garden is planted with New Zealand flax and the raised area is nine metres (29 feet) long.

The house measures 250sq m (2,700sq ft), is a receivership sale and is asking €1.4 million through Property Partners O'Brien Swaine.