Lush, elegant and large on Park Ave

This 1880s house has its period features intact, is well-proportioned and has a large garden backing onto sports grounds, writes ROSE DOYLE

IT IS WELL proportioned, has high ceilinged rooms, 47m (154ft) of lush, west-facing garden and a semi-detached, nicely back-from-the-road location on one of Dublin 4’s quietly elegant roads: all of which gives 37 Park Avenue, Sandymount, something of a head start among buyers looking for a period home.

Built in 1880, the house is in great shape with original decorative plasterwork, shuttered sash windows, doors and fireplaces all intact and in place. It was last on the market in 1994 when it made €382,000. Lisney is now selling it by auction, on May 26th. The AMV is €1.75 million.

Given a lot of privacy by trees and hedging to the front and rear, number 37 is two storied with a three-story return and 225sq m (2,420sq ft) of space divided into three reception rooms (one a sunroom), four bedrooms (one en suite) and kitchen/breakfast-room. There is off-street parking and a large garage.

The formal, interconnecting, ground floor drawing/dining rooms are traditional in every way with cornicing, central roses and a pair of brass-hooded marble fireplaces with particularly nice inset tiles. The interconnecting double-doors are over 7ft high.

The kitchen, which has rustic-style fittings, a quarry tiled floor and a gas-fired Aga, leads to the family/sun room. An addition to the original house, this has a two-tiered ceiling with a couple of Velux and a curved wall of windows overlooking the garden.

The garden, with Monkstown Rugby and Pembroke Cricket clubs over the rear wall, is core to the house’s appeal. It has fruit trees, evergreens, lilacs, cherries, a mini-pergola and a long-haired, cast-iron girl on a seat which add to the other-days feel of it all.

The first return has a bedroom with a cast-iron fireplace and the family bathroom while the main and second bedrooms are off the first-floor landing. The main bedroom has a marble fireplace similar to those on the ground floor, a shower in one corner and basin in another. The fourth, en suite, bedroom is eyrie-like at the top of the return with views as far as the Dublin mountains.

37 Park Avenue, Sandymount, Dublin 4

A four-bedroom house with good proportions for € 1.75 million. It is set well back from the road and has a large, lush garden

Agent:Lisney