Ailesbury Park is a top-tier Dublin address that has everything you need within about a five-minute walk of the property. The Sydney Parade Dart stop is literally over the back wall. If you constructed a ladder to climb up to the platform, you’d be on it in five seconds. As it is, it’s about a two-minute walk away.
The Merrion Shopping Centre is a similar distance. The emergency department of St Vincent’s Hospital is probably a full five minutes on foot. Elm Park Golf Club, which was founded about 15 years after number 25 was constructed, is less than 10 minutes, as is Sandymount strand.
As for schools, St Michael’s College for boys is almost across the road while the Teresian School for girls is less than 15 minutes away. Both offer primary and post-primary levels.
The L-shaped street is a quiet cul-de-sac with bollards preventing vehicular entrance from the busy Merrion Road.
The handsome, five-bedroom redbrick is set well back from the road and its current owners are only the second family to live in Chipton, as the house was named when it was built circa 1910. When they bought it, in 1999, it had retained almost all its original features.
With the help of retired architect Desmond Barry, who with David Sheehan cofounded the conservation practice Sheehan & Barry, they have gently brought its Edwardian silhouette into the 21st century.
The upgrades start at the front door where panels of the leaded glass either side of the front door were replaced by similarly toned designs at Artisan Glass Studio. The front door was rehung on a steel frame and given a performance upgrade by the Period Door Company to improve security and keep draughts at bay. Even the original brass stair rods are in situ, lovingly upgraded.
The interconnecting reception rooms feature a drawing room to the front, which enjoys a bay window, and a dining room to the rear which now opens out to a sheltered courtyard. There are beautiful brass hooded fireplaces in both rooms, with soft green tiled inserts in the front room and ruby red and gold tiles set into the dining room surround. Both rooms still have their original mahogany mantels.
Artist and friend Maura Culbert advised on the colour scheme, telling them that their house “should flow like a painting”, as the owner tells it. She suggested Delphi, a soft warm gold from Irish paint company Colourtrend that gently raises the temperature of the entire house, warming you to the classic decor that features throughout the D1 BER-rated property.
The ceiling heights extend to 3.1m with lovely coving that echoes the lines of the architraving. Derek Ryan Carpentry did an excellent job of marrying the look of the panelling he added to the hall and stairwell with the existing architraving while underfoot the original parquet, set out in a herringbone pattern and bordered with mahogany, was restored by Custom Hardwood Flooring.
The kitchen is accessed via a TV room, where a stove warms the smaller room and leads past a good-size utility. This is a new extension that has a brick exterior and a classic look that is in keeping with the rest of the house.
It is now a light-filled L-shaped space with glazing on three sides and antique gold Jerusalem marble flooring underfoot. Its painted in-frame cabinets were designed by John Daly.
It leads out to a gently raised, low maintenance garden where the sun trap at the back gets southwestern light when you sit facing the house.
There are three bedrooms on the first floor, two doubles and a generous single, with another on the return and the fifth at the top of the house. It has a study area set into its dormer window from where you can see all across the city.
The property which extends to 285sq m (3,068sq ft) is seeking €2.25 million through Bennetts Auctioneers.
