Two Leinster Road homes with exotic flourishes

3 Leinster Road, Rathmines

Number 3 Leinster Road is probably the most interesting house to come on the market in Dublin lately.

It’s the sort of house that people wonder about because it looks so different from its neighbours. Leinster Road is mostly lined with two-storey-over-basement Victorian houses, while this pretty house at the Rathmines end of the road has just two storeys and was built much earlier. It’s also set back from the road at the end of a lovely 85ft long garden, which adds to the intrigue.

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A reception room at 139 Leinster Road with period marble fireplace and exposed pine floors

The three-bedroom 234sq m (2,518sq ft) house is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for €1.3 million.

Property-watchers with long memories will remember it as the home of well-known garden designer Angela Jupe. She created two beautiful, atmospheric gardens for the house, one to the front, which also incorporates a drive-in paved with reclaimed brick, and a secret garden to the side with water features and lush planting all bordered by old stone walls.

When Jupe sold it 17 years ago to move to the country, the new owner kept the house’s charming atmosphere. She says she hasn’t been as rigorous in maintaining the gardens, but they are still lovely.

It’s a house with atmosphere and with countless unique details, from original period details including the smart plasterwork at the entrance to the more recently added paint treatments inside.

The two good-sized reception rooms, one on either side of the hall, are decorated in rich, dark colours. The livingroom to the right features beautiful Anna French metallic bird-themed wallpaper.

The kitchen at the back of the house is relatively small but has a high ceiling. It is like a French country kitchen, with marble countertops and delicate decorative paint treatments on the wall. It opens via an interesting antique cast iron and glass door into a formal diningroom which is the other reception room on the left side of the hall.

Upstairs there are two large double bedrooms and a single. Again, each has interesting colour schemes and decorative touches, and all have fireplaces and high ceilings.

The main bedroom has another wallpaper pattern from Anna French. It’s not surprising that over the years this house has been the setting for several fashion shoots.

The good-sized bathroom with a sunken bath is in the return, and there’s also a small guest toilet off the hall downstairs.

Jupe added a single-storey garden room extension to the side that is so sympathetically designed it looks as though it was always there. The current owner commissioned a beautiful mural for it and, while it has a wood-burning stove, it is currently used mostly in summer.

It opens on to that secret second garden, also to the front but not visible from the road. New owners might consider moving the kitchen into this large light-filled space.

– Bernice Harrison

139 Leinster Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6

Number 139 Leinster Road has had its fair share of residents over the last 150 years, but by far the most colourful was Mir Aulad. In 1762, Trinity College Dublin created a department of Oriental Studies with the aim of rivalling Oxford and Cambridge, and 100 years later appointed Mir Aulad, a Muslim from Northern India, as Professor of Arabic, Hindustani and Persian.

“The Mir” as he became known about town was instrumental in training civil servants who went on to serve in his native India. The turban-clad figure was popular in Dublin’s high society and is forever immortalised in WB Yeats’s Reveries over Childhood and Youth and the writings of James Joyce and AE (George Russell).

Today Number 139 is home to Leonie Flannery and her family who purchased the house in 2000. “It was really well cared-for, all the period details were intact, and that is what attracted us to it,” says Leonie.

The family engaged conservation architect Peter Roberts to oversee the update of the 263sq m (2,830sq ft) property which lies at the corner of Leinster Road and Charleville Road in Rathmines.

Gracious The interconnecting reception rooms on the piano nobile are gracious, with 13ft ceilings, period marble fireplaces and exposed pine floors. Both rooms are light-filled thanks to two sets of original sash windows overlooking the road and garden respectively.

The property has a prominent basement, which is typical of houses built in the late 1800s – they gave an air of grandeur, showing passersby that one could afford live-in staff. Today the basement is the heart of the household and features a large informal dining-cum-living-room overlooking the front garden.

The couple installed a new kitchen, moving it from what is now the downstairs toilet to a large space at the rear of the property. Designed by Devlin Farm Kitchens, it has a timeless feel to it and houses a giant Britannia range set in solid dovetailed units. The old coal hole has taken on a new lease of life as a wine cellar.

The house had five bedrooms; the fifth lies in the basement and is currently used as a playroom.

A highlight of the property is the spacious master bedroom on the top floor with its dramatic indigo walls and sizeable fireplace.

To the front, the property has off-street parking behind electric gates set in a Victorian style of clipped box hedging with clusters of agapanthus. To the rear is a small but easily maintained garden with side access on to Charleville road.

Number 139 is a handsome period property with plenty of space and storage and is for sale though DNG with an asking price of €1.35 million.

– Elizabeth Birdthistle