In the home he has lived in since 2003, the owner of number 597 South Circular Road, a doctor, prescribes a balance of colour, light and decorative elements to create a stately space within the Victorian three-bedroom terraced house.
Situated on the stretch of this long road between the national children’s hospital and Kilmainham village, the property is set on a north-south axis with off-street parking for one car discreetly hidden behind gates. An electric charge point is concealed behind foliage, of which there is an abundance.
This is a stately Victorian home that hides a restfully painted interior with gorgeous planting in the front and back gardens as well as a good balance of living space and accommodation.
The front door sets the tone for the rest of the house. It is painted with a deep and restful green, Deep Bronze Green by Little Greene, a hue that is found elsewhere in the house, including the main bathroom on the return.
It opens into the hall, where pierced brass lights, one from Morocco, the other from Syria, set the mood. Underfoot are the original pitch-pine floorboards, bare but covered with an elegant runner, a decorative trope repeated in the interconnecting rooms to the right.
These are private spaces that are washed in light by boxed windows front and back. Each has privacy shutters that can be closed halfway or all the way, depending on the time of day. The single glaze timber windows all feature rolled glass to emulate the originals. These frames were all built from a window box the owner rescued from a neighbouring skip and had his builder replicate.
Bookshelves fill two adjoining walls in the front room, where the owner’s duck-down filled sofa, one of many pieces sourced from Robert Kime in London, feels like you’re sitting on a cloud. There’s a window seat upholstered in suzani, a Tajikistan textile featuring peacock leaves, and a series of lozenge-shaped ikat cushions are scattered throughout. There is a similar approach taken to the front bedroom.
The back room celebrates antique tables and chairs, often derogatorily called “brown furniture”. It’s craftsmanship, use of real timbers, some becoming increasingly rare, and depth of colour is finding favour with a new generation.
There are patinated antique mirrors everywhere. From brass picture rails European-school oil paintings and portraits hang on chains in gilt frames. There are prints by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, a favourite purchase, of 19th-century Grand Tour travellers, and tapestries aplenty. The ambience throughout is calm and restful.
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The kitchen is housed in the return. Set in an L-shape it has lavender blue units but feels darker in comparison to the rest of the rooms. Underfoot the floorboards have been painted in a chequerboard pattern.
Potential criticism of less light is blown away by the sun-drenched breakfastroom, which opens out to the garden. This room doubles as a “sick bay” for plants in need of extra attention, the owner explains. One stands out. Sparrmannia Africana is a fragrant specimen that grows so tall that, he says, a friend uses a pair of them instead of curtains in her London home.
Throughout, the owner demonstrates a natural vocation for garden design. Within the courtyard is a splatted apricot, whose sweet fruit you can pick from it through the window. Clambering through it is pale yellow rose.
On that kitchen exterior wall climbs both a lemon and orange tree, citrus fruit visible on a crisp February day. The lemon blossom, he assures, is beguiling, but lamentably not in evidence.
In the main garden, spalted conference pears line one part of the formal planting. Elsewhere is Christmas box, which elicits a beautiful scent in the depth of winter, and a medlar. Across the path is a winter-flowering cherry, also with a companion rose threaded through it. These are just some of the plantings in a south-west facing garden that extends to 18m (60ft). The photographs show how the garden looked last summer.
Upstairs, on the return is the main bathroom and one of its three double bedrooms. The main bedroom is to the back of the house and has a shower en suite.
The second bedroom is used as a dressingroom/entertainment space and features a piano, open fireplace and a secret jib door, concealed behind a tapestry, that opens through to the back bedroom.
The property has a D2 Ber rating and extends to 153 sq m (1,647sq ft), and is on the market seeking €795,000 through Savills.
