A semicircular house high up on a hill in Dalkey, built nearly 30 years ago, has sea views from nearly every room. Katama, a detached five-bed on 1.25 acres of lawn and woodland on Mount Salus Road, takes its name from a neighbourhood on Martha’s Vineyard in the US, where its owners have a house.
Designed by Irish and American architects, it has an American flavour, with a mostly open-plan, bright ground floor. The materials used in building it are high spec: all the floors are concrete, timber-framed windows are by US company Andersen, internal doors are heavy oak and floors are mostly solid maple.
Now the 419sq m (4,510sq ft) house on Mount Salus Road is for sale through Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty for €4.75 million. It has development potential, says selling agent Stephen Day; the 1.25-acre gardens are split roughly 50-50 between lawn and woods, which slope steeply up to the right of way that runs from Torca Road to Knocknacree Road. The woodland area could be built on, says Day. Katama has a B3 Ber and a self-contained one-bed apartment at garden level with separate outdoor access.
Katama is the first house on the right of Mount Salus Road, a cul-de-sac behind a pillar and gates off Knocknacree Road. Steps at the side lead up to a tall white front door, which opens into a double-height front porch with a large glass window looking on to the deck at the side. Designed by architect Tom de Paor, this was a later addition to the original house, which was built in 1994, designed by Irish architect David Crowley of Cantrell & Crowley Architects and New Hampshire architect Dennis Mires.
Immediately beyond the front porch is the open-tread maple staircase with steel and timber banisters, dividing in two as it leads to the semicircular second-floor landing. A few steps down on either side of the staircase lead to the curved open-plan ground floor, completely floored with maple. On the right is the kitchen/breakfastroom, which has an Aga, a large stone island unit with oak-topped eating spaces at both ends and glazed patio doors opening on to the deck outside.
A few steps at the right lead from the kitchen down to a cosy book-lined family room/TV room; indeed, there are bookshelves everywhere, from this room to the study at the opposite side of the house. The diningroom is more or less in the centre of the open-plan ground floor, next to the kitchen: it looks straight out to sea views through a six-pane bow window. The layout circles next into the drawingroom, with an open fireplace, more bookshelves and more sea views. Two steps down lead into a bright octagon-shaped study with a vaulted ceiling and views to the front, back and side of the house.
Upstairs there are three bedrooms off a semicircular landing, with a large circular skylight over the stairwell. At the side of the landing is a window seat and glazed double doors opening on to a balcony overlooking the back garden. The bedrooms are doubles, two of which are en suite. The main bedroom has a vaulted ceiling and a floor-to-ceiling window with a door on to a narrow curved balcony looking across the sea to Howth. Off it there’s a good-sized walk-in dressingroom and a large tiled bathroom with a shower and bath. There’s also a utility room on the upstairs landing and a hot press.
There’s a fourth bedroom at garden level with an en suite shower room and an octagon-shaped study. The fifth double bedroom is at this level, in a self-contained apartment that has a sittingroom/diningroom/kitchenette and an en suite shower room. There’s storage and room for wine cellar off the garden-level hall.
Outside, there’s a curved deck off the kitchen and family room opening on to a large lawn that circles the house, bordered by shrubs and mature trees. The woodland behind it comprises roughly half the 1.25 acres, and the owner has built paths through the woods; they lead up to vehicular gates – with a door inset – that open close to the Knocknacree Road end of the paved right-of-way path from Torca Road. There’s lots of room to park in the gravelled front garden.
