Number 135 Tritonville Road, Sandymount, Dublin 4, is a redbrick, terraced house which was built in the 1830s and has many of its early Victorian features intact. With two reception rooms, four bedrooms and a long, lovingly-tended rear garden, it goes to auction through Gunne on September 21st with a guide price of between £500,000 and £550,000. A house which clearly inspires loyalty, it has been in the same family for more than 60 years.
It was the childhood home of the poet and diplomat Valentine Iremonger, brother of the present owner and vendor.
The small, railed front garden is as impeccably tended as the rear one. The hall door with fanlight opens into a high-ceilinged hallway, where there is cornice work, a centre rose and arch to the inner hallway and stairs. To the left is a sitting-room. Here too are cornices and a central rose as well as a black, marble fireplace with cast-iron inset and tiled hearth. A gas fire has been fitted. A second door, this one off the inner hallway, leads to the dining-room, where a long window with a deep sill gives views of the rear garden. Again, the plasterwork is intact though the cast-iron fireplace has had brickwork inserted.
The kitchen/breakfast-room on the return measures 19 ft by 10 ft 6 in and needs some modernising. It has a window on to the garden, a gas fire with back boiler, a range of built-in units and door to the rear garden.
The stairs has a wooden bannister and leads to the first floor return where there is a landing with a hot-press and, off it, a small bathroom and two bedrooms. The bathroom has a lavatory with old-style chain flush, a wash-hand basin and deep bath. The bedrooms, too, are small, with one opening into the other through an adjoining door. The outer bedroom door has a coloured glass panel while the room itself has a built-in cupboard and window to the side. The second bedroom measures 11 ft 4 ins by 6 ft and overlooks the rear garden. A short flight of steps leads from here to the front of the house and main landing - which is lit by a high, rear window - and the remaining, much larger, bedrooms. In the main bedroom, which takes up the front of the house, it has two windows and is more than 21 ft wide. It has a white marble fireplace with curved, cast-iron inset, centre rose and cornice work. The second, rear bedroom, has a cast-iron fireplace, built-in wardrobe and original plasterwork.
The rear garden is 110 ft long. With a granite wall along one side, it has lawns and old-style plants and bushes such as hydrangea, fuchsia cotoneaster, rhubarb and geraniums. There is a rockery too, and a pathway and a large, solid metal shed. One of a series of stone sheds houses an outside lavatory. Heating is gas-fired.
