Strawberry Beds home grew from a cottage

Sunnymeade, is a three-bedroom, detached house at Strawberry Beds, Dublin 20 with an acre of gardens.

The southwest-facing house has more than doubled in size since it started life in the 1930s as a small cottage attached to a market garden.

About half of the land runs up a steep slope behind the house, while the rest is pooled around the front and sides as emerald green lawns, shrub borders and vegetable plot. The property is being auctioned by Lisney on October 25th with a guide price of £900,000.

In the older part of the house, on the left hand side of the front door, some of the internal walls have been removed and the space is now occupied by just two rooms.

The first is a large drawingroom, with a free-standing chimney breast, while the second is a cosy study, lined with bookshelves, and painted a soothing avocado green. A large PVC-framed, double-glazed conservatory runs along the rear of the house, and forms a link between the drawingroom and the kitchen. Generous heating ensures that the conservatory is comfortable all year round, and lovely views of the greenery outside make it a pleasing garden room.

The kitchen is a two-part room with a granite-topped, peninsular counter separating the eating from the cooking area. There is a good range of stained pine units in the well-laid-out space. Several skylights in the roof and glazed doors to the back garden make this a bright and cheerful room. A small, windowless utility area adjoins.

A bedroom wing is off to the right of the front door. At hall level there is a shower room and two modest double bedrooms, both with two windows; in the second room, one of these looks into the conservatory.

The third bedroom, which has a separate bathroom, is on the upper level, and is reached by an open-tread staircase. There are rows of windows on opposite sides of the room, and in one direction, there is a peaceful view of the river Liffey and the grounds of the Hermitage golf course beyond.

Attached to the rear of the house there is a tiny two-storey annex with a self-contained room on each level. Elsewhere on the property there is a garage and a small home office.

The steep hill behind the house has been terraced and planted with drought-resistant shrubs such as hypericum, cistus and gorse. Meandering paths lead to sheltered sitting areas, including a little wooden shelter at the top with far-reaching views.