This house on Saval Park Road in Dalkey, Co Dublin, has a very large garden – and potential for development. The AMV of €1.35 million for Caldragh, which goes to auction through DNG on December 7th, reflects that potential, for new owners may decide to knock down the house and rebuild on the 0.7-acre site.
The vendor bought the four-bedroom house, built in 1932 “by a widow and her companion”, 45 years ago, in 1971. Her children have long left the family home and she is unsentimental about the prospect of it being knocked down.
The large garden is one of Caldragh’s main attractions, with hazelnut trees, a holly tree with bright red berries foretelling a cold winter and a huge conifer by the entrance gate. But the three-quarters of an acre could accommodate more than one house. The owners of Caldragh had considered building a dormer bungalow at the bottom of the garden, and got planning permission to do so, but it lapsed in 2011.
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The detached, slightly forbidding-looking house with a grey-granite exterior, stands near the front of the garden. The conifer near the entrance is impressive but makes the entrance quite dark: there is no preservation order on it, so new owners could consider removing it.
Caldragh was extended to the side in 1979, adding a kitchen and an extra bedroom upstairs. But now it would need serious refurbishment to make it a comfortable modern home.
The front porch opens into a fairly bright front hall. A long drawingroom with a bay window at the side on the left opens through French doors into a small sunroom at the back of the house, which opens onto the garden.
There’s a bay-windowed diningroom at the front, with a hatch opening into what was the kitchen, which has a panel of serving bells over the door. This is now a family room/breakfastroom with a solid fuel stove. There’s a door from the decent-sized kitchen into the garden and a utility room/store room and downstairs toilet off it.
Upstairs there are four bedrooms, two singles and two doubles and a bathroom and separate toilet.
Farm and horses
When Caldragh was built, instead of the houses across the road there was a farm, and horses could be seen running up and down the road, says the owner. Now it’s one of the few houses left on a large site on the road, nearly opposite Fairlawn House, a refurbished Edwardian on an acre that went on the market recently for €2.5 million.
Saval Park Road runs up to the entrance to Killiney Hill Park at one end. It’s a reasonably short walk downhill from Caldragh to Dalkey village, and it is close to shops on the corner with Barnhill Road.
