A Victorian on one of Dún Laoghaire’s finest squares has been decorated by its owners in a style extremely faithful to its period. Keen collectors, it is furnished with mirrors and cabinets, light fittings, dressers and beds, even bathroom fittings from the 19th century and earlier.

Since they moved in more than 30 years ago, Bernard and Anne Marie Barton have modernised the house, keeping or restoring its period details including original marble fireplaces, elaborate cornicing and centre roses in the hall and main reception rooms. And their drawingroom, Victorian-style, remains on the second floor of the house, overlooking the well-maintained green space that is Crosthwaite Park. It's certainly the grandest room in a surprisingly bright house, with a large chandelier, tall swagged drapes on two windows and a specially-made back-to-back sofa in the centre.

Now Crosthwaite House is for sale through DNG for €2.275 million. Its owners, High Court judge Bernard Barton and his wife Anne Marie, who are on the board of multi-denominational charity the Military and Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem, are downsizing now that their four children are grown.

The six bed sits on the corner of the east side of Crosthwaite Park, with its front door facing on to Corrig Road; it’s the only double-fronted house in the terrace of houses all built in 1860 and at 420sq m (4,520sq ft), one of the largest. It has a relatively small but pretty garden – with a heated gazebo at the end – at the side of the house, separated from Corrig Road by a high stone wall. There is residents’ on-street parking.

Garden room

Ten years ago, the couple transformed the garden level of the house by adding a large conservatory-style garden room beside the kitchen: it has a high arched roof and underfloor heating. The kitchen has a Belfast sink, Stanley range, polished granite island units and timber units with original Victorian handles collected by Bernard.

There are two bedrooms off the terracotta-floored garden-level hall, and a recently-installed Victorian-styled bathroom.

Upstairs, the rich plasterwork in the hall has been attractively picked out with gold, as in the rest of the rooms with elaborate cornicing. There’s a livingroom and large study on one side of the hall and diningroom on the other, all with marble fireplaces; all the floors upstairs have polished and partly-carpeted original timber floorboards. There’s another bedroom and Victorian bathroom at this level.

The interiors are freshly painted and decorated and filled with collections of beautiful furniture of the kind most modern houses can’t accommodate. Nowhere is this more evident than in the wide drawingroom on the second floor, where heavy gold-swagged curtains cover two windows, one a bay, overlooking the park. There are two more bedrooms here, one elaborately decorated with two single canopied French beds. The upstairs landing is bright, with an oval window in the roof. The sixth bedroom is on the final return at the top of the house.