Before the Milltown Luas stop opened at the end of Temple Road, few people had reason to pass down
that wide, leafy road in Dartry that is lined with some of the Dublin’s grandest houses. Shrewsbury, Ailesbury and Palmerston tend to be seen as the most expensive Dublin addresses but in fact Temple Road in Dublin 6 has vast Victorian piles and because they don’t come on the market very often the grandeur of the houses – and their matching price tags – tends to be under the radar.
Thorndale, 31 Temple Road is now for sale for €4.95 million through Sherry FitzGerald – making it one of the most expensive houses on the Dublin market. It is vast, at 495.2sq m (5,330 sq ft ), and that excludes a self-contained one-bedroom apartment annex – and it’s on nearly half an acre of landscaped gardens.
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Temple Road was developed in the mid 1800s and is named after Henry John Temple, better known as Lord Palmerston. Incidentally, when her husband died, Temple married his mistress, Emily Lady Cowper, whose name also crops up in Dublin 6 addresses.
Renovations
The 1901 census showed, predictably, that the houses were lived in by the upper echelons of Dublin's professional and business classes – the Jacobs, the biscuit people, lived there for example – and all employed several servants.
The family who live in number 31 have been there since 2000. Before they moved in, they renovated the three-storey house from top to bottom as well as landscaping the gardens. New owners will have little to do, although they could update the self-contained, one-bedroom annex to the side, used now by one of the adult children of the household, or even incorporate it into the main house if they need the space.
It’s a very grand house and it is decorated with great taste. At hall level there are three rooms, two interconnecting formal drawing rooms on one side of the hall, a large family room on the other. A room currently used as a study could be a fifth bedroom and what would originally have been the cloakroom has been turned into a guest toilet.
Upstairs, off the spacious landing, there are four double bedrooms – there were five but one was turned into an ensuite for the main bedroom. The family bathroom is on this level.
Garden design
Down at garden level, off the wide, bright entrance hall is a large, eat-in kitchen which runs the depth of the house. There's also a study, a utility room, plant rooms, and a full bathroom complete with free- standing, Victorian-style bath and separate shower.
The house’s many period features have been maintained, including fine decorative plasterwork, polished timber flooring and sash windows.
Garden designer Paul Doyle worked on the gardens which wrap around the house, dividing them into lawned areas at the front and a formal garden at the side and rear with box hedging and a water feature. There is parking for several cars.
