Isobel O’Driscoll and her husband, Dick, bought the family home she had grown up in in Glenageary after her father died in 2005. Living with Isobel’s mother, and with seven children, they needed to extend, and added a modern two-storey extension at the back of the house. Built by her grandfather in 1931, the original house had lots of art-deco features – mahogany-panelled walls and wall lights in the diningroom, original brick fireplaces – that they were determined to keep while they revamped the house. They included features like ceiling coving in the kitchen to marry the old and new parts of the property.
Now Glen Aulinn, a 354sq m (3,810sq ft, excluding the attic) seven/eight bedroom meticulously maintained semi-detached house on Lr Glenageary Road, Glenageary, Co Dublin, is for sale through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty for €1.95 million. It stands on 0.3 of an acre of richly planted gardens which include patios and several seating areas designed to capture the sun through the day. It has a C1 Ber rating.
A glass door in the arched entrance opens into a quarry-tiled porch and then into the large front hall: it has a pale oak herringbone parquet floor and traditional Lincrusta panelling on hall, stairs and landing painted French Grey above and Old Cream below. A stag’s head above the picture rail is labelled Shot in Devil’s Glen, November 30th, 1940; it faces an original brick fireplace. The house name – Glen Aulinn – is etched into glass above the hall door: meaning “Beautiful Glen”, it’s a reminder that Silchester Park across the road was still a glen in the 1930s.
The drawingroom on the right has a wide bow window – PVC, like all the windows in the house – with a window seat and a fireplace with a tall mahogany surround and tiled inset. A wide arch leads to the diningroom with mahogany-panelled walls, art-deco wall lights beside the fireplace and French doors opening to a back patio. A hatch over a shelf in the corner opens into the hall, across from the kitchen.
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A cosy study/sittingroom off the hall looks on to the front garden and there’s a smart downstairs bathroom with a mosaic-tiled floor.
The O’Driscolls hired interior designers to help integrate the old and new parts of the house: the kitchen, in the original part, has panelled walls and cream timber cabinets made by Paul Kelly of Wicklow Timber in Bray. It has a pale tiled floor and black polished granite countertops and island.
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The kitchen opens directly into a spacious breakfastroom with a Junckers oak floor: floor-to-ceiling glazed windows on one side open on to a side patio, a glazed door into the garden on the other. There’s a large family room at the end with a box bay window looking out to the garden.
A bronze statue holding a working lamp on the finial of the banister at the foot of the staircase is a striking art-deco feature. Upstairs, there are five bedrooms off the wide top landing. The main bedroom, like the livingroom below it, has a wide bay window with a window seat and an art-deco fireplace with a timber surround. Another double has a mostly tiled en suite shower. A family bathroom has a rolltop bath and a step-in shower.
There are three bedrooms and a shower in the top floor extension, which could be converted to a completely separate suite, suggests Dick O’Driscoll – the walls are all partitions. Steep stairs lead from the second floor to the large converted attic with Velux windows, fitted out as a space to study and relax, with TV and a sofa.
Glen Aulinn had always been a multi-generational house, say the O’Driscolls, and there’s certainly plenty of scope here to accommodate grandparents. There’s also lots of space for people working from home: the converted garage on the far side of a small courtyard with a timber-panelled ceiling, fitted out as a gym, could be a home office; a door from here opens into a utility room. Beside it is a purpose-built bike shed.
The 79ft-long back garden has a number of surprises: gravelled paths lead around a neat lawn, bordered by high hedges, flowers, plum and apple trees. On one side is a play area with swings and a trampoline; directly behind the house, off the diningroom, there’s a good-sized patio with seating and a small pond. There’s a retractable awning for sunny days, and a heater for cool weather.
There’s plenty of room to park several cars beside the lawn in the front garden.
