A four-bedroom house in Blackrock, Co Dublin, in need of complete refurbishment, was built by the owner's grandparents, who wanted to live in the country. The year was 1928, when busy Stradbrook Road was a quiet country lane. Nan Crawford, the owner's grandmother, designed it herself, and the Arts and Crafts/art deco touches remain, in timbered ceilings and some of the fireplaces.
Rowan Cottage, Stradbrook Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin, a detached 140.8sq m (1,520sq ft) four-bedroom house on almost one-fifth of an acre, is for sale by private treaty for €695,000 through Felicity Fox.
New owners will need quite a lot of extra money to renovate and redecorate the house: they would probably replace the kitchen and the garden room at the back of the house, maybe build a new extension. They will need to fix signs of dampness in various spots in the house, decide whether to replace white PVC windows, whether to keep a garage at the side. The house has oil-fired central heating.
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Exposed beams
The cottage is set down a short laneway off Stradbrook Road, near the junction with Rowan Park Road. A porch leads into a hall, which, like the two reception rooms at the left, has exposed wooden ceiling beams.
At the end of the hall that leads into the kitchen/ breakfastroom is a small parlour/study.
Upstairs are four bedrooms, three of them doubles, a bathroom and separate toilet. Two of them have open fireplaces with original art deco tile surrounds. The house has character, with these original period details; much of its current furniture is late 19th/early 20th century.
The private back garden is one of the property’s best attractions: the lawn is surrounded by mature trees and bushes and it has a patio area. There’s room to park several cars in the lane leading up to the house at the front.
Nan, a nurse, met her husband Captain Harold Frederick Crawford in the first World War. His brother Ernie Crawford was a rugby international in the 1920s, so it’s fitting that Blackrock College’s rugby club is close by, just up Stradbrook Road.
