A Georgian house on an acre of beautiful gardens feels so secluded it could be in the heart of the country – but Glasthule Lodge is a short walk from Glasthule village in Co Dublin, hidden away down a lane off Adelaide Road. Built in the 1820s, it has plenty of period features – elegant plasterwork, marble fireplaces, stained-glass panels set into some windows – but is also a comfortable family home.
One of its most striking features is the long drawingroom on the first floor, a great room for parties, say the owners, John Hughes, a musician and the manager of The Corrs; and his wife, Marie. They’ve hosted many well-known musicians and actors in their home since they bought Glasthule Lodge in 2000 for €1.75 million. The 80sq m (861sq ft) coach house adjacent to the house accommodates a recording studio, where Andrea Corr’s Christmas album was produced in 2022.
Now Glasthule Lodge, a detached double-fronted two-storey over-basement 336sq m (3,616sq ft) four-bed plus the coach house on an acre of gardens is for sale for €4.25 million through agent Bohan Hyland & Associates. Marie, who viewed the house when John was away on tour, liked it “because it looks big but has a homey feel”; she hopes that another family with young children will move in now that they’re leaving, having reared their four children there.
Over the past 24 years, the couple made a number of changes: they put on a new roof, using 100-year-old slates, installed a new gas boiler, and put in new doors at the back of the house. New owners might want to make more changes – for example, extending the kitchen, renovating other rooms. The house is a protected structure, and is exempt from the requirement for a Ber rating.
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Open gates on Adelaide Road, close to the bridge over the Dart line, lead down a private lane to the tall electronic gates opening on the right into Glasthule Lodge. There are a number of houses on the lane, but Glasthule Lodge controls the right of way. A gravelled path, with room to park plenty of cars, borders a huge front lawn sheltered by tall trees, leading to the pillared entrance into the Lodge.
A front porch with a tiled floor opens into a front hall with its original polished timber floor. There’s a wide sittingroom on the left with a white marble fireplace with tiles inset and French doors opening into the garden at the side of the house. A cosy study on the right has a black marble gas-effect fireplace and under the carpet, says John, there’s a foot bell, which would have been pressed to summon servants. Another quirky finding are the names on one of the shutters of the four men who painted the room in 1898.
An arch with stained-glass panels leads to the back hall: down a few stairs are the kitchen on the left and diningroom on the right. It has a polished timber floor, walls painted vivid red/orange above white tongue-and-groove wainscoting and stairs leading back up into the study. French doors open into a side garden.
The kitchen is cosy, with a white tiled floor and a black Aga. Doors off it open into a utility room and French doors open on to the back patio: new owners may well want to create a new kitchen, which could be easily extended on to the patio, says Marie.
There are four bedrooms upstairs, all doubles: two are on the return, one on the top second floor of the house, with the main bedroom on the first floor next to the large drawingroom. The handsome drawingroom has elaborate plasterwork, a wide white marble mantelpiece and three tall windows looking over the front and side of the house.
The main bedroom has an en suite with a black tiled floor and white tiled walls. A family bathroom on the second floor has tongue-and-groove panelled walls painted pink – and off it, a walk-in closet.
There are four rooms in the basement, used for storage: it’s a good place for a wine cellar and new owners might consider creating finished rooms here.
The 80sq m (861sq ft) coach house was a mews house for previous owners. Now it’s Hughes’s office downstairs and upstairs, a recording studio. The office is filled with neatly filed folders and shelves full of CDs and photographs: one shows John shaking hands with Nelson Mandela. Hughes composed the Mandela Suite for his album Wild Ocean II, and recorded a video with Mandela’s co-operation to accompany it.
Upstairs is his well-fitted-out music studio, with three Veluxes in an arched ceiling, exposed stone walls and a polished timber floor. Here’s where Andrea Corr’s album of Christmas songs was recorded. They linked by Zoom with a choir in Perth, Australia, and an orchestra in Belgium.
The large walled back garden, maintained with the help of a local gardener, is wonderful: a few steps up from the back patio, an iron gate opens on to glossy green lawns divided by hedge-lined paths. There are tall trees and shrubs everywhere, 100-year-old apple trees and tall beech trees in woodland at the bottom of the garden. A corner near the house has been turned into a Japanese-style garden. Glasthule Lodge backs on to The Metals, a pedestrian path that runs from Dún Laoghaire to Dalkey beside the Dart; a door in the back wall opens on to it, a neat shortcut to Glenageary Dart station.
