Period gem

At a time when new owners are ripping out walls and opening up spaces in their houses, it comes as a refreshing change to visit a genuine late Victorian gem that has all the dividing walls, sash windows and even the front door key as orginally intended. Mount Harold Terrace, in Dublin 6, is in a row of eight four-bedroom redbrick period houses set well back on long front gardens near the Harold's Cross end of Leinster Road. Finnegan Menton is guiding in excess of £450,000 for number 3, a beautifully-preserved example of Victorian craftmanship. The sale will set the tone for houses on the upper end of Leinster Road where houses are traditionally cheaper. The three-storey period houses closer to Rathmines village have been fetching mid to late £500,000 this year. When the houses were built in 1840, the builder himself moved into this one. The present owners bought the property nine years ago from a family who had lived a lifetime in the house. There was plenty of work to be done, but this was mostly cosmetic as the original features were there under several layers of paint.

The heavy front door was repainted and the couple replaced stained-glass side panels which were cracked. They had the stairs and bannister rail dipped and the walls were papered in expensive-looking period style wallpaper they had found in Kinsella Interiors. Very ornate cornicing in the entrance hallway, as elsewhere in the house, is perfect. Like many period terraced houses, this one goes far back and is much larger at 2,000 sq. ft than it looks from outside. The sitting room interconnects through panelled double doors to a dining room and both are very spacious. The pine floors have been stripped and polished to a honey tone and walls are a deep burgundy. There are matching marble and cast-iron fireplaces in both rooms and the sash windows and shutters on the back and front windows work well. The cornicing and deep frieze underneath have been given touches of gold. Dimmer switches on centre and side lamps provide atmosphere for dinner guests. The kitchen and breakfast room are down a couple of steps on the ground floor return. Here, the owners decided they wanted to keep the breakfast room and scullery kitchen separate. They took up the old cracked black and red quarry tiles, put in a damp proof course and replaced them with similar new ones. Space for a new black Aga was found in an old brick alcove.

The breakfast room is large enough to be used when friends come to dinner. Behind the Aga, the separate kitchen has custom-made antique pine cupboards and the built-in dishwasher, fridge/ freezer, oven and hob are all included in the house sale. A coal glory-hole was turned into a green-tiled utility room and a Belfast sink retrieved from a skip was built into a pine cupboard.

Upstairs on the first floor return there is a double bedroom and a timber-floored family bathroom which was probably the maid's room. The free-standing claw-foot bath was bought for £30 and painted green. Antique brass taps in the bathroom and kitchen were collected in junk shops and auctions around the city. There are three further bedrooms on the first floor. The main bedroom overlooks the back garden and a church beyond. This has a deep frieze similar to those in the reception rooms and a beautifully restored cast-iron fireplace. One of the front bedrooms is double, also with a fireplace and the other is a single room with a pine floor. The front garden is well set back from the road; the back garden is small, but very secluded. A gate at the end of the garden leads to a back lane-way shared with the church.