‘Riverdance’ composer Bill Whelan’s Victorian home for €3.795 million

Fernhurst, on Orwell Park, is a very fine Victorian detached house with intricate exterior brick and sandstone detailing.

A landmark Monterey pine in the front garden shields the house from view. Standing on 0.3 acres of grounds, the property is deceptively large spanning a width that is between double and treble that of the average house on the road. The house measures 418sq m (4,500sq ft) and is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald with an asking price of €3.795 million.

Mosaic tiling outside leads through the Gothic-arched front door and into the fine hall where all the rooms have ceiling heights of more than 11 feet, ornate architraves, pitch pine doors and floors, brass door knobs and fingerplates as well as great panes of leaded and stained glass.

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The house has been very gently led into the 21st century. The windows, while upgraded, retain their original mechanisms and Victorian style radiators heat the rooms.

Riverdance
It is a home that suits its owner, composer Bill Whelan, whose babygrand piano sits in the bay window of the double drawing room – a great space with interconnecting doors that slide back to reveal a room to the rear with ornate ceiling plasterwork and a mirror-image bow window. While the rooms were built for entertaining, it is clear that they are also in everyday use.

Whelan is best known for composing a piece for the interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, Riverdance , the electrifying seven-minute reinterpretation of traditional Irish dance that became a full-length stage production and elevated the dance form into international popular culture.

A family room on the other side of the hall is a cosier and equally well used space. A door off it leads down to the double- height Victorian conservatory which has a vaulted glass roof. A set of steel steps takes you down to a limestone floored room.

The diningroom has had an unusual Venetian plasterwork treatment and is painted a very deep and restful green. From the table a double-height French door leads the eye up to the vaulted ceiling as well as providing a snapshot view of the well-tended gardens.

Adjoining the diningroom is a John Daly-designed cherrywood kitchen that includes a box bay window and window seat – a lovely gathering space. The kitchen has black granite countertops and an inky blue four-door Aga.

Games room
On the hall return is a statement double-height stained glass window that floods upstairs and downstairs with warm washes of colour. A bedroom painted anthracite grey is also on this level.

On the first floor there are three large bedrooms all with 11 foot high ceilings. The mink- coloured master bedroom has a sizeable en suite bathroom that includes a separate bath and shower.

The family bathroom at the top of the house, fittingly, is accessed via a minstrel’s gallery and a bank of linen cupboards the size of an average bedroom. The bathroom has verdant garden views.

At garden level, two bedrooms share what agents like to call a Jack-and-Jill bathroom. There is also a utility area secreted behind a folding door. A den or games room to the rear has French doors leading outside to a granite patio.

The garden, which adjoins St Luke’s Hospital, has a high laurel hedge to the rear and while formally laid out and carefully planted it doesn’t feel fussy.