Number 23 Belgrave Road is a house full of memories. The walls seem to have soaked them up, and they’re happy ones at that. Joan Mooney’s father bought the house in 1932, off the plans, and moved in as soon as it was built. “I was born here,” she says, and it’s an obvious wrench for her to see it sold. The house eventually passed on to Joan’s brother, Raymond Duffy, who became an antiques dealer with Lawlor Briscoe. And not surprisingly, the house became full of the things he couldn’t bear to part with.
“Ray is also very creative,” says Joan, pointing out his touches everywhere – wild and extravagant murals on the first-floor landing, and a breakfast room with a wall of mirrored panels and a pelmet painted to look like the battlements of a romantic castle. Alongside the paintwork, there are more lovely touches, a door handle like a lizard, original metal window frames, and Arts and Crafts-inspired stained glass windows everywhere.
In the breakfastroom there’s the original panel of servants’ bells remain, and Joan remembers her parents having, like most people in the area, a live-in helper, who would be summoned by their sound. Upstairs, Ray and his wife, Gerry, converted one of the four bedrooms into a bathroom, but as there’s also a second bathroom and wc on this level, new owners may want to convert it back. The kitchen is small, a little room off the breakfastroom, but there’s plenty of room for reorganisation, including extending into the long back garden.
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Joan is full of stories of growing up here. She shows me the sea view from the second bedroom, and tells me how her brother, Kevin, frog-marched the neighbours in and charged them 6p to see his star attraction: “the lights of Dublin coming on across the bay”.
“The neighbours are lovely,” says Joan. “Most of them have been here for ages too, there’s a real community.”
The house also has a long front garden and there’s a garage, currently used as a store room, at the back, reached by means of a lane. For sale with Lisney by private treaty for €850,000, the house needs a little work, but it’s in a super area, and there’s a great base to build on, and a lot of happy memories to add to too.
