Dublin 4 €3.75m: A large house near the city on Ailesbury Road combines low maintenance and high amenity living. Kate McMorrow reports.
Guiding €3.75 million in the lead up to auction on 17th November with Ganly Walters, 78 Ailesbury Road, Dublin 4 is the ideal choice for someone with deep pockets and a busy lifestyle in need of a low maintenance family home close to the city centre.
The modern 290 sq m (3,100 sq ft) four-bedroom detached house was built 12 years ago by businessman Harry Crosbie in the grounds of a large period house, and has been further renovated more recently. This was where the coach-house and glasshouses once stood, so it's at the far end of the original garden, behind a terrace of rebuilt period houses.
The location is one of this property's best assets, away from traffic noise at the end of a long crunchy gravel drive bordered by beech and laurel. The only sound is the gentle splash of a fountain set into the cobbled terrace. Over the boundary wall is the garden of the Belgian embassy.
New owners will have nothing to do in this pristine home other than move straight in. Curtains, carpets and walls throughout are soft cream and white, colours easy to live with and which add to the brightness of the interior.
The front entrance hall opens to a lofty inner hall with a beautiful marble floor and atrium window overhead. Through another door is the kitchen/breakfastroom, a big family-friendly area with white units, terracotta floor tiles and a range of integrated appliances, including two fridges. Worktops are polished granite and the island hob will use either electricity or gas.
French doors open to the terrace from the informal dining area and there is a fitted laundry room. Next to the kitchen, beyond a downstairs guest toilet, is a large family sittingroom with double doors to a southwesterly corner of the terrace. A flame-effect gas fire is set into the classic fireplace.
Across the hall is a cream-painted drawingroom with a stone and slate fireplace and two sets of French doors to the loggia and front terrace. A guest bedroom next to this with an en suite shower room would make a great study.
Three further double bedrooms and the family bathroom are upstairs, all expensively fitted out and bright. The main bedroom is particularly glamorous, with a bank of white wardrobes, a marble fireplace, en suite bathroom and walk-in dressingroom. A fridge full of champagne, pair of glass-doored bookcases and an easy chair by the fire suggest that this room is often used as a peaceful retreat.
Bathrooms around the house are furnished to a high specification, with antique-style taps and expensive tiles. Outside, planters and flower beds are brightened up with pansies and late bedding plants. A couple of tall palm trees flourish in the front terrace.
The grounds are bordered by the high walls and mature planting of long-established neighbouring gardens on this road. Over one wall is the garden of the Belgian embassy.
What was once the front lawn of number 78 has been cobblelocked in the interests of low maintenance and additional guest car-parking. A busy new owner might well approve of this, especially if gardening is not their forte. The long pergola stretching almost the length of the house could be covered with fast-growing climbers in no time at all.
