Seanchara, Strand Road, Bray, Co Wicklow Description: Five-bedroom villa with potential on seafront in Bray Agent: Sherry FitzGerald
A detached cream-coloured house nearly opposite the bandstand on Bray’s seafront stands out because it’s a complete contrast to the tall three-storey terraced buildings that line most of the promenade. Seanchara, built in about 1860, is a large, single-storey over-basement villa on 0.36 acres next door to three busy pubs.
It’s been a family home for the past 35 years, but at various times, family members have run it as a guesthouse, a restaurant and most recently, rented out the basement as a Montessori school. It has potential for development: the owners did have planning permission – now lapsed – to build four houses to the rear, where the property backs on to a high redbrick wall next to the railway line in Bray.
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Seanchara, a 346sq m (3,724sq ft) five-bedroom house, is now for sale by private treaty through Sherry FitzGerald for €1.6 million. A curious mix of family home-cum-business, it has been well-maintained and modernised over the years, although new owners would most likely revamp it again, depending on how they plan to use the property.
Lots of handsome period features remain intact: decorative plasterwork and centre roses in high ceilings, marble fireplaces, and a lovely stained-glass window in an arch in the front hall. It also has triple-glazed PVC windows and a PVC front door.
Accommodation includes interconnecting reception rooms on the left of the hall with polished timber floors and marble fireplaces. Two large bedrooms on the right of the hall each have small en suites, as have three bedrooms on the return up a flight of stairs at the back of the hall.
Downstairs, on the garden-level return, is a comfortable country-style kitchen with a Stanley range that heats a back boiler. A separate small family room has a study off it.
More stairs lead down to the 115.9sq m (1,248sq ft) basement: this has a tiled floor, three large rooms, separate men’s and women’s bathrooms with toilets and wash-hand basins (from its restaurant days) but no kitchen. There is separate (including wheelchair) access to the basement, which has potential as a separate flat.
There are various outbuildings in the lawned back garden, which has a patio and a vegetable garden. There is lots of room for parking at the front and side of the house.
