Built in the early 1860s, for wealthy Dubliners to enjoy holiday homes at the seaside, Dun Laoghaire’s Royal Terraces now form an elegant square, bounding a green park.
The idea of escaping the city centre to go there on your holidays is an odd one now, as a few stops on the Dart or a short car trip brings you right into town, but back then horses took their time, and the few coach houses that do survive at the ends of the long back gardens on the terrace are testament to a different era.
Number 32 is at the end of Royal Terrace West, and so has lovely dual aspect windows in the drawing room. It's also the only house on the terrace to have double bay windows in the hall and upper floors.
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The ceilings on the entrance level, where the drawing and living rooms are, are 12ft high, and have their original plasterwork and roses. The floors are original too.
Wine cellar
There are other nice reminders of the old days – a metal circle, set into one of the wide granite steps that lead up to the front door, is the opening to a coal chute, down into what is now the wine cellar off the garden-level kitchen.
There’s also a butler’s shelf in the hall, where once upon a time, servants would have rested trays while they tidied themselves up for public presentation. The coach house for No 32 is long gone, but the current owners have had drawings made up, and are generously providing them to the new owners, should they want to apply for planning permission for a mews at the end of the 100ft garden.
As neighbours along the terrace have already done this, there’s precedent and opportunity.
Currently, the house provides graceful and elegant accommodation, with three bedrooms on the top floor, and a bathroom on the return.
The master bedroom has been partitioned off to provide two walk-in wardrobes, but if you like to look at your ensembles while lying in bed, it would be easy to open this up again.
Atmospheric
The owners, who have lived here for the past 16 years, did most of their work on this house in the basement area, which had been a little unwelcoming when they first moved in. Now there’s an atmospheric and stylish country-house kitchen, leading to a bright playroom/den (this room had originally been used as a fourth bedroom), which in turn opens through French windows to a sunken patio, leading up to the lawn.
It's a lovely house in a great area, and with a guide of €1.05 million with Hunters, there's plenty for new owners to love, and also lots to think about in terms of doing more at the bottom of the garden.
