A Victorian house brings more than a flavour of a rambling countryside home to the south Dublin suburb, writes EMMA CULLINAN

THIS LARGE Victorian house, with generous gardens front and back, recalls a time when Dún Laoghaire was countryside. While Eglinton House, Eglinton Park is close to all of Dún Laoghaire’s amenities, once you are through its iron gates and into the front garden, with greenery from a golf club beyond, you could be far from the city.

The garden was a big attraction to the couple who bought this home nine years ago, and the front part has a formal layout with soft planting that pleasingly blurs the edges. At the back there is a potting shed and vegetable garden beyond the lawn that has a sunken trampoline in it.

The main house, which is for sale through Lisney at €1.5 million, also has generous proportions, with stone and wide plank floors and the confident but muted colour scheme (in wallpaper and paint) of a rambling country house.

If you take the formal approach you head up the granite steps to the piano nobile, where there is a drawingroom to one side and a diningroom to the other. Both are dual aspect with huge sash windows giving views to the greenery front and back.

Both rooms have marble fireplaces. In the diningroom, a built-in sideboard opens up to reveal a dumb waiter that carries goods down to what was once the kitchen and is now a cosy living space – heated by an in-situ Aga – off a new kitchen, which was added to the side of the house.

The period details – including the Aga, intact plaster work, dumb waiter, rack of servant bells and old hotel doors to the livingrooms (with faded room numbers still on them) – are a testament to the fact that the previous owner was an antique dealer. And the respect for such objects has continued.

The kitchen extension – whose shape mirrors the existing house despite being sharply modern – came about because both of the current owners wanted a bright kitchen. And that is what Dermot Boyd of Boyd Cody architects gave them.

The floor, countertop and weathered-walnut unit surrounds in white terrazzo reflect the natural light coming in from above and through vast glazed walls front and back.

To the rear the kitchen sink is at the same height as the terrazzo terrace beyond while, to the front, floor-to-ceiling glass walls (that slide right back) open on to a terrace and south-facing garden beyond where the soft planting contrasts with the slick frame from which it is viewed.

Having the cosy living space (which the current owners have kept TV free) beside the kitchen means that dinner parties can gradually retire on to comfortable seating.

A huge amount of storage has been incorporated here, behind built-in walnut cupboards but one of the doors opens, surprisingly, into the lower hall of the main house. These are two completely different worlds.

On this floor is a bedroom to the front and bathroom to the rear and utility beside it – both reconfigured from a former warren of rooms. While it wasn’t exactly what the owners planned, it has proved to be an excellent area for guests: with the adjoining bed and bath space on their own floor.

The rest of the bedrooms – three plus a walk-in wardrobe (or baby bedroom) – are on the top floor.

The main bedroom has an en suite with a dreamy, long walk-in shower with a glass wall, and a bath overlooking the back garden.