You can tell right away that number 28 Grosvenor Road in Rathgar has been a wonderful home for the family who have lived there. Call it intuition, but you sense the happy vibes as soon as you walk in to the welcoming reception hall.
This Victorian house, built around the 1850s, exudes warmth and comfort throughout and, despite its generous proportions at 320sq m (3,444sq ft), no part of the house feels disconnected from the other.
Factor in the charming features, including a Provence-style orangery, a study with a feature angled window, and a lovely rear courtyard garden, and you have a home with potential to make a lifetime’s worth of memories.
With a Ber of D2, the five-bedroom property is for sale through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty, seeking €2.75 million.
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The owners have lovingly looked after the house over the past 30 years, tastefully refurbishing and redecorating where needed, and sourcing such period touches as door handles and fingerplates. Their overarching aim was to preserve the period style of the house while making it work for modern living, and they’ve certainly succeeded here.
Now that their children have grown up and moved out, the owners are ready to let it go and allow a new family to get the full benefit of this wonderful home.
“Always do something because you can, not because you have to,” is the owner’s sage advice.
Number 28 is one of the few houses on Grosvenor Road with off-street parking, with space for two cars on a gravel drive behind electric gates. There’s a beautifully manicured front lawn with a door leading to a west-facing patio on the side, perfect for early evening relaxation.
The reception hall has intricate ceiling coving, a centre rose and an inner arch. To the right is the formal drawingroom with ceiling cornicing, a picture rail, a feature marble fireplace and a magnificent bay window looking out to the front.
To the left is the diningroom also with intricate cornicing and a marble fireplace plus centre rose. Both rooms get used all the time, says the owner, for entertaining friends, hosting family Christmas dinners and also to facilitate two of their daughters’ wedding breakfasts. The entire hall floor level is laid with lovely varnished timber floorboards.
Downstairs at garden level things get cosy and countrified. There’s a kitchen/breakfastroom with hand-painted timber presses, cupboards, drawers, display cabinets and plate rack, plus a Silestone worktop with a stainless-steel undercounter sink, a five-ring gas hob, an oven and a Stanley range. The floors at this level are done in a lovely rustic stone tiling, and there’s also a utility room/pantry area with lots of shelving and presses, and a guest WC.
To the back of the kitchen the owners added a small but beguiling orangery, which features exposed brick walls and French doors leading out to a private rear terrace.
There’s a built-in workstation here too; use this as your work-from-home spot and you’ll feel like you’re in the French countryside. Next to the orangery is a boot room also leading out to the rear courtyard, with lots of storage for coats. There’s rear access on to Leicester Avenue.
The family room has a cast-iron fireplace, a fine built-in oak bookcase with space for a TV and two windows looking out on to the side courtyard.
“This might have been the maid’s flat back in the 19th century,” reckons the owner. Whatever it was, it’s now made for a family to wind down in comfort.
Through an understairs cupboard lies a cellar area that runs underneath the house. You have to get down on all fours to crawl in here but the owner says that when the children were small they would use it for a themed birthday or Halloween party.
On the half-landing to the first floor is a generous-sized bedroom, a shower room which the owners put in, and a storage press with its own window, which could be turned into an en suite.
There’s also a large study with wood-panelled walls, cast-iron fireplace and a huge mahogany bookcase made by David Lennon. A feature angled window juts out giving views over both Grosvenor Road and Leicester Avenue. The theory is that the window was added by a previous owner to allow his sick wife to sit and look out at the goings-on in 1800s Rathgar.
On the first floor are the principal bedroom – with a cast-iron painted fireplace, ceiling coving and a picture rail, plus a large en suite with a free-standing roll-top bath and a large shower – and a third bedroom with a cast-iron fireplace and a built-in desk. The second floor has two more large bedrooms, both with plenty of wardrobe space, a bathroom and a separate shower room.
Grosvenor Road is quiet and peaceful and “the neighbours are lovely”, says the owner. It’s close to Rathgar and Rathmines villages and numerous bus routes run into Dublin city centre. Some of the country’s top schools are in the vicinity, including Alexandra College, Gonzaga, St Mary’s, Stratford College and High School Rathgar.
