Terenure, D6W €1.2 million:A bomb shelter and a secret back garden are unusual features in this roomy house

Hildon, 51 Rathdown Park, Terenure, Dublin 6W

Description: Four-bedroom Stringer-built detached property with a bomb shelter and secret back garden

Agent: DNG

Hildon, a Stringer-built detached house in Rathdown Park, is unusual in that this roomy family home comes with its own bomb shelter in the back garden .

The house was built in 1938. On January 2nd, 1941, German bombs damaged houses further down the street. There were no fatalities but number 27 was destroyed. The incident puts number 51’s unusual feature into context. The date of the construction of the shelter is unknown but it is conceivable that it was built after the German bombs hit neighbouring houses.

The four-bedroom house is situated on one of Dublin 6W’s best roads and is in need of some modernisation. Asking €1.2 million through agents DNG in Terenure, it is a property that will test the market’s appetite for properties in this price range.

The front door, situated to the side of the house, opens into a large, cherrywood-floored, rectangular hall. The kitchen is small by today’s standards and old-fashioned in its decor. It has painted units, granite worktops and faux-Venetian plaster paintwork. It overlooks the garden, one of the property’s big selling points.

There is plenty of room to extend the kitchen out into the garden or to the side, where a large garage gives you another 42sq m (450sq ft) of space to play with.

There are two reception rooms to the front. The smaller room has a cherrywood floor. Both have white marble classical style fireplaces. The finer of the two rooms has a bay window to the front. Interconnecting doors lead from it into the lounge, a room that has a step-down conservatory attached. Double doors lead from the uPVC sunroom out to a large sandstone patio.

The interior is in need of a makeover – but it is of the Botox variety rather than a full facelift. Fresh paint and paper schemes would really contemporarise the look of the house and show off its fine proportions. If you did want to give in to a full Joan Rivers-style lift there is ample room to extend out into the garden.

The property is already sizeable. It measures 241sq m (2,600 sq ft) and has some lovely original features including picture rails and coving. There are ornate gilded pushplates and door knobs on all the downstairs doors. Upstairs the doorknobs are all topaz-coloured glass.

There are four bedrooms on the first floor. The property originally had five bedrooms but the present owners used the fifth single bedroom to create an en suite bathroom for the master bedroom. There is a very large bay-windowed double to the front with plenty of space to install another en suite bathroom. A third double to the rear overlooks the private back garden and if the new owners are planning to extend, it would benefit from being enlarged, given its garden aspect.

The fourth bedroom is a large single big enough for a small double bed. The adjacent family bathroom has a separate shower and free-standing, roll-top bath.

The garden is one of the property’s best features. It is southwest facing and is 58 feet wide and 110 feet long. This includes a secret concreted garden area cloistered behind the high Cyprus hedge that marks the false end of the garden.

The bee-hive shaped concrete bomb shelter has a door and a small window at ground level. A similar-shaped shelter is on view in the military gallery of the National Museum in Collins Barracks.

Out front there is a large tarmacadamed space with off-street parking for several cars.