The front door of Clonard, an Edwardian house in Terenure, tells something of its story: its large inset stained-glass window was made by artist Beatrice Elvery, who lived in the house with her husband Charles Gordon Campbell, Lord Glenavy, in the early 1920s. Embedded in the glass is its date – 1923 – and the words “Fáilte romhat agus beannacht leat” in Gaelic script.
Campbell, son of a unionist MP, was the secretary of Ireland’s first Department of Industry and Commerce in 1922 when Clonard was attacked by anti-Treaty forces. The house survived, although the Campbells moved much later to a smaller house in Sandycove, Co Dublin, with their son Patrick Campbell, writer, humourist, British TV personality and, earlier, The Irish Times’s “Irishman’s Diary” columnist, Quidnunc.
Built in 1904, Clonard had several owners before its current vendors bought it at auction in 1998 for €875,000. They have thoroughly modernised it since then while keeping its original structure and period details. Now Clonard, 1 Glenavy Park, Terenure, Dublin 6W, a 325sq m (3,500sq ft) four/five-bed detached house, is for sale for €2.65 million through Sherry FitzGerald. A railed moat-like path runs around the part-redbrick villa-style house on just over a third of an acre of very private grounds, at the edge of an estate of 1960s houses built on land originally belonging to the property, giving it the Glenavy Park address.
Clonard’s most striking feature is the grand, very bright, entrance hall, filled with light from a glass dome over the centre. The coffered ceiling is painted white with gold detail; original wall panels – once brown in the Edwardian style – are painted white too. It’s floored with pale polished limestone. Clonard’s meticulously cared-for interiors tend to the luxurious but colours are largely neutral shades of white and taupe.
The main living areas – a drawingroom and a large kitchen/diningroom – open off either side of the hall. Three steps up at the end of entrance hall lead to two bedrooms and a livingroom. There are two more bedrooms and a bedroom/family room downstairs.
The drawingroom at the right of the hall has an oak herringbone floor, white marble open fireplace – with gas inset, like all the fireplaces in the house – a centre rose and a sweep of three bow windows overlooking the side lawn as well as a window looking over the front. They have original timber shutters and are double glazed.
On the opposite side of the hall is the large and very grand kitchen/diningroom, floored with pale crema marfil tiles. Chandeliers hang from centre roses over the dining table and kitchen island and there’s a white marble fireplace in the dining area. Glazed French doors open from this end of the room down a few steps into the garden.
The kitchen has polished granite countertops and island, cream units, a large larder, a Villeroy & Boch Belfast sink and Viking Professional kitchen equipment.
Up the few stairs at the end of the front hall is a long corridor floored with cognac smoked oak running the width of the house: at one end is the main bedroom, with another double bedroom and family bathroom at the other end. In the middle is a livingroom which the family calls the snug: it’s a bright room, sunny on an August afternoon, with a marble fireplace and a wall of floor-to-ceiling bow windows with glazed double doors in the centre opening on to a curved cast-iron balcony with steps down into the garden. (Outside, you get a good view of this handsome and unusual feature: the balcony has a glazed canopy over it.)
The main bedroom, with two windows overlooking the back garden, is sumptuous, with part-mirror-fronted fitted wardrobes along one wall, a fitted vanity unit and teddy bears, collected by the owner, lounging on comfortable chairs. The en suite has coving and wall panelling and a marble-tiled shower.
The family bathroom has a limestone floor, limestone-walled shower and part-panelled walls.
The downstairs of the house is accessed through a small morning room/reading room off the front hall: it has a curve of windows and a window seat overlooking the garden. Stairs lead down from the room to a smartly decorated space that in recent years was largely given over to the family’s two adult sons as their own living quarters. There are two double bedrooms here and a large room that could be a bedroom or livingroom, currently used as a gym. They open off a long hall that runs, like the one upstairs, the width of the house; the hall and bedrooms are floored with walnut. There’s a fully tiled shower room off the hall and good-sized utility room at the end with a door opening into the garden. It could be converted into a kitchen, creating self-contained accommodation downstairs.
Clonard has no attic, but there are two good-sized storage rooms, one used as a walk-in dressingroom. The downstairs windows are all protected by decorative iron bars, original to the house
The garden wraps around the house, with most of the lawn at the side and front: a good-sized patio sits at one side beside the tall hedge, which along with a wall and two very mature trees, an ash and a sycamore, keeps the garden very private. There’s lots of room to park in a sweep of gravelled front garden behind electronic iron gates.
Glenavy Park is off Terenure Road West, not far from Terenure village.
