Victorian charm in a world of change

CLONTARF: €860,000:A Clontarf family home with bow windows on three levels, and lots of handsome period details is going on the market at €860,000

THINGS may have changed all around it but number 205 Clontarf Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3 still has the charm, original features and well-proportioned rooms that made it a family home of distinction in 1846.

It helps that the vendor has zealously cared for its pedigree over the last 20 years, even to adding features salvaged from less fortunate period buildings. A singular frontage with a curve of bow windows on three levels also helps.

Set back from busy Clontarf Road, with a well-planted garden, no 205 has two floors over garden level, a floor space of 172sq m (1,850sq ft), four bedrooms, three reception rooms and a large kitchen/breakfastroom.

A two-storey coach house at the end of the 150ft long rear garden, used as a home office, has a floor space of 24sq m (260sq ft). For sale by private treaty through Gallagher Quigley, the asking price is €860,000.

No 205 was built on “a plot of ground at The Sheds” sold by landowner John Edward Vernon Esq to Joseph Mannin in the 1840s. (The Sheds, so-called because fishermen used mend their nets there, is now a notable nearby pub.) Mannin built three similar houses on what at the time was called Hillview Terrace but was renamed Clontarf Road in 1929.

The ceilings at ground and first floor levels are 11ft high, the plasterwork elaborate, the room proportions designed with family living in mind.

An outer reception hall is like a welcoming snug; it even has a colourful, leaded glass door to the inner hallway.

A bow window lights up the old-style yellows and white of the front-facing drawing room. An original, white marble fireplace also benefits, as do the polished, wide plank floorboards.

A delightful, plasterwork frieze over the door, and another in the next-door dining room, were original to an even older Georgian house. The diningroom fireplace is of black slate with, fitted into the wall on either side, a pair of period, mahogany, floor-to-ceiling cabinets.

A bedroom on the ground floor return has garden views. Below this the garden level has been reinvented to create a front-facing family room with bow window and separate kitchen/breakfastroom with lots of rustic fittings and a French window to a rear patio.

The third bow window allows for mountain views from the main bedroom. A rear bedroom has a 6ft wide window and the fourth bedroom is more of a box room.