The south side of Highfield Road in Rathgar is dominated by vast Victorian houses set well back from the road, most with basements and all on large sites. However, the houses that line a good stretch of the north side of the road are quite different. Built much later, in 1908, by one of Dublin’s most successful Edwardian-era builders, Stringer, they are solid suburban redbricks aimed when they were built at a more modern buyer looking for a modest-sized house that could be managed with the help of just one servant.
Some motoring buyers took Stringer’s option of having a garage – they were that up to the minute.
More than a century later, the pretty semi-detached houses with their timber-trimmed porches and square bay windows are not of course considered modest. Number 73 has five bedrooms over 232sq m (2,500sq ft) and is for sale through DNG for €1.75million.
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The owners bought just over 20 years ago when they renovated the double-fronted, semi-detached house, updating the kitchen and bathroom. Upstairs there is a pleasantly rambling feel with five double bedrooms spread over two levels.
The main bedroom has an en suite and there is a good-sized family bathroom.
Downstairs off the hall – the encaustic hall floor tiles are particularly attractive – are three reception rooms, a smaller parlour room to the right, and two interconnecting rooms to the left with access out to the rear garden via French windows.
Throughout the house there are trademark Stringer touches such as decorative stained glass in doors and windows, feature fireplaces and deep bay windows to the front.
The kitchen at the rear is fitted with Siematic units, expensive when they were installed 20 years ago but still looking good. In a covered passage to the side is a basic utility room which opens into the garage.
New owners will decorate from the top to bottom, updating the family bathroom and possibly extending to the side to enlarge the kitchen or going up into the attic as others on the road have done.
The owners are downsizing. Taking advantage of the house’s corner position, they have divided the rear garden to create a site for a new house for themselves opening on to Neville Road; construction has yet to begin.
Number 73 now has a 12m-long back garden – a new red-brick wall divides it from the newly created site. There is off-street parking to the front in the mature garden for two or three cars.
