The late Louis Lentin, producer, director and former head of drama at RTÉ, composed the brief for the documentary Dear Daughter in this redbrick house.
The film focused on the late abuse campaigner Christine Buckley’s treatment as a child in the Goldenbridge industrial school run by the Sisters of Mercy in Inchicore. It was first broadcast in 1996 and again in April 2014, a month after Buckley had died and shortly before Lentin died after a sudden illness.
At the top of the terraced period house, which is at the Harold’s Cross end of Leinster Road, is his small office, built on a mezzanine at the base of a rear window.
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It is a level up from the first floor and made use of that “useless space”, says his wife of 45 years Ronit, journalist, author and former associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin.
Warm
The Lentins bought the house in 1982 and reared their children – daughter Alana and son Miki – here. Ronit has now decided to downsize.
The house has a warm atmosphere and two fine interconnecting reception rooms: a good size sittingroom to the front and a darker diningroom to the rear.
There is fine architraving on the doors and windows and the rooms have a creme caramel colour scheme, with a caramel coating on the ceilings.
Steps lead down to the eat-in kitchen where a door opens out to the sizeable northwest-facing garden, which is about 60 feet long. There is also pedestrian access to the rear.
The next owner might be tempted to push the kitchen out to fill the patio space and even extend upwards as some neighbours on the road have done.
Bedrooms
There is a good-sized bathroom on the hall return, along with a cot room that Ronit uses as a study.
The master bedroom overlooks the garden. The front room, originally a drawingroom, has been divided into two bedrooms.
Lentin’s video archive, which has been bequeathed to the Irish Film Archive, sits on the shelves in the small corridor that connects them. His papers have already been given to Trinity College Dublin where an exhibition is planned for the autumn.
Agent DNG is seeking €850,000 for the property, which measures 147sq m (1589sq ft).
According to the property price register, 151 Leinster Road, a four-bedroom double-fronted house with 244sq m (2630sq ft) of space at the Rathmines end of the road, sold for €1.23million last September. Number 113 sold for €750,000 in February 2014.
