In 1990, when the current owners bought 55 Leeson Park, a fine two-storey-over-basement granite and redbrick Victorian house, it had been subdivided into eight flats. Returning it to a family home was “a big and very dirty job”.
The property is believed to be the work of renowned Victorian architect Rawson Carroll, whose work includes the Switzer building on Grafton Street, now Brown Thomas, and Marlfield House in Co Wexford.
Layers of paint concealed the exemplary front door and hall whose ornate features include a centre rose, cornicing and coving and a decorative architrave leading to the stairwell and inner hall.
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Bedsits
The interconnecting reception rooms are so ornate that it feels as though the contestants from The Great Irish Bake Off were let loose in them with their icing bags. A bedsit occupied each of the two fine spaces with a shower room installed in one alcove and a kitchenette in the other. Plasterboard dividing walls protected the doors and their architraving. The rooms have white marble fireplaces and marbled wallpaper that the next owner might like to update. The owner "ran out of money" and chose uPVC oversash windows, something she now regrets. The shutters are still in situ but have all been boarded shut.
There is a fine stained glass round window on the first floor return where the sizeable family bathroom is. It has a bath, bidet and roomy shower- cum-steamroom but the tiling needs an update.
Private garden
On the first floor there are two bedrooms. The coving in the back bedroom seems dull when compared to the lavish confections in the other rooms of the house. The master bedroom to the front spans the width of the house and has a white marble fireplace.
At garden level there is a spacious living room to the front, where the owners installed an Italianate mantelpiece. To the rear of it is the kitchen, with French doors opening out to the garden. A bedroom to the rear has sliding door access to the garden. An open-tread staircase leads up to hall level. On the return there is a good-sized bedroom. Adjacent to it is a wc and a door that leads to the garden via a set of granite steps.
Climbing jasmine covers part of one of the high granite walls that ensure the sunken garden feels ultra private.
Mews potential
The house is set back from the road and there is off-street parking for at least two cars and vehicular rear access to a garage that has electricity and has been plumbed. It has a mezzanine level with flooring. Subject to planning permission, this could be converted into a small mews.
Built in 1866, the house, while it is large, at 283sq metres (3,046sq ft), "feels quite manageable", says the owner. It is asking €2 million through agents Savills.
In March 2013, number 1 Leeson Park, a property in walk-in condition, sold for €1.8 million, €300,000 over its AMV of €1.5 million.
According to the Property Price Register, number 49 sold in October of the same year for €2.15 million.
Across the road number 16, an end-of-terrace property in three four-bedroom apartments, is asking €1.85 million through agents Turley Property Advisors.
Boasting some of the finest period homes in Dublin, the neighbourhood is minutes from Ranelagh and a 10-minute walk from St Stephen’s Green.
