Cliffside, a cottage-turned-luxury-modern-home, has a dramatic backdrop that would be a great setting for a movie — the high cliffs of Dalkey Quarry in Dalkey, Co Dublin. It’s the end house in a terrace of five quarrymen’s cottages built in the 1830s when Dún Laoghaire Harbour was being constructed.
From the outside, 5 Ardbrugh Villas — Cliffside’s original address — looks like the other four houses on the terrace, except for a side view of the large modern extension at the back of the house. Inside, it’s a very cool minimalist home throughout, decorated in not quite 50 shades of grey: features include an engineered pale oak floor in the reception hall and large open-plan kitchen/livingroom/diningroom; a small internal courtyard; a livingroom/cinema room and a main bedroom in a semi-basement with a walk-in dressingroom and floor-to-ceiling windows opening on to a patio with steps up to the garden.
The young property developer selling Cliffside bought number 5 in 2016 from previous owners who had started to redevelop the semi-derelict house. He refurbished it, then decided to live in it, moving in just before the Covid lockdown. But his life, he says, is closer to town, so now he’s selling. Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty is asking €2 million for Cliffside, the 209 sq m (2,250 sq ft) four-bed on 0.25 acres. Rewired, replumbed and insulated, it has an A3 Ber rating.
Although the facade of the house with its front door remains, the real entrance is at the side of the house. Double glass doors at the left of the entrance hall open into the high-ceilinged kitchen/diningroom/sittingroom in the newly built part of the house at the back. The kitchen has pale grey polished stone worktops, an island unit with an inset induction hob, and a breakfast bar. The dining area is in a very deep floor-to-ceiling box window, where concertina doors fold back to frame the dramatic view of Dalkey Quarry and the old signalling tower that looks down into it.
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A short flight of stairs with a glazed banister lead upstairs to the livingroom/cinema room: it is wired for a projector, has soundproofing wallpaper, and a picture window overlooking the back garden.
There’s a smart family bathroom and a utility room off the front hall, and a sliding glazed door opening into a small paved courtyard that links the original to the new part of the house. There are three double bedrooms, one of which is used as a home office, off the hall in the completely refurbished original house. One has floor-to-ceiling built-in wardrobes and a smart en suite with a tiled herringbone floor.
Stairs lead from the hall down to the semi-basement and the main bedroom: like the rest of the house, the decor here is decidedly modern man, with a dark grey ceiling and a large walk-in dressingroom with lots of hanging space and shelving. The en suite fittings are from Sonas and again, in different shades of grey.
Cliffside’s interiors were designed by Catherine Quirke of Quirc Interior Design; the garden was designed by Claire Hawker of Willow Design. Like the inside of the house, it’s simple and unfussy, with a wide grey-tiled patio stretching across the back of the house, a BBQ and built-in seating, and a wide lawn bordered by shrubs. A stone wall separates it from the quarry, where a deep belt of wild vegetation separates the wall from a popular walking path. And what makes this garden strikingly different is the high outcrop of rock at its side.
There is plenty of room to park in the front garden.
The developer selling Cliffside is behind Torca Homes, whose developments include St Paul’s Square in Glenageary, Co Dublin, and Redan Cliff, three luxury homes beside Cliffside on Ardbrugh Road.
