Family home that could easily break the €1 million barrier
OLD houses have their problems - renovation costs are likely, there’s more chance of things going wrong - but they often have something over their modern counterparts, a real personality.
Rathmahon on Castle Road Blackrock is an example. Sunny and comfortable, it already feels like home. Generations have clattered down its staircase and still do: it’s an unpretentious and unfussy house, despite its formidable size and desirable location.
Now on the market with Malcolm Tyrrell of Cohalan Downing, it’s pitched at a reasonable €900,000, considering it has 3,500 square feet and a position on the much-coveted Castle Road.
Detached, with period features and a long, south-facing back garden, it’s ready to move into. But it could still be tweaked here and there, which should tick all the boxes for would-be buyers.
Right now, it has four official bedrooms, but there are servants’ quarters in the basement, with a minimum of four rooms, and two of these would make decent bedrooms.
This area would be ideal for teenagers or the au pair, as it has its own entrance from the back and includes a kitchen area and a shower room.
The main entrance is quite impressive; a boxed porch with panels in mahogany and cathedral glass, leads on to the main hallway, which runs directly along the middle of the house with the main living room taking up most of the space to the right.
This faces north over the Marina and has three big sash windows overlooking the driveway.
A large room, there’s an impressive white marble fireplace in the centre, (this was moved from the side to create a more symmetrical space) and at the end of this 30 foot long room is a large, corniced niche - perfect for the antique sideboard that’s currently in place.
There’s so much room here you could fit at least two separate suites of furniture to break the room into functional spaces, or a formal dining table could easily fit at the door end, which is close to the kitchen.
The possibilities are endless, which is what’s nice about Rathmahon - you can put your own stamp here without making any material changes.
The kitchen is bang up to date in maple and runs at least 15 ft along one wall of the south-facing room. The black granite work top is leavened by soft white and blue decor and flooring, as with the rest of the house, is mellowed, wide-plank red deal.
At the garden end, there’s space for a dining table and then double doors lead through to the impressive conservatory.
Full square, with glass overhead and Victorian cast-iron supports, this room basks in the direct southern sunlight.
It’s also got an Indian marble dining table, inlaid with lapis lazuli, that it would take a crane to shift, so the vendors might be open to offers on it.
The conservatory has to be a major selling point of this bright house, but walk out another set of double doors and you’re straight into another one - the garden.
If you take into account an overall site of about a third of an acre, then this garden takes most of that. It stretches right back from the house and has old limestone wall boundaries on either side, which creates a nice micro-climate.
The garden isn’t just “done”, it’s laden. The apple trees are precious old varieties, including port wine, a ruby red apple whose colour runs into the flesh of the fruit.
Avid gardeners will be rearing to go here while those looking for a peaceful, private haven should be reassured. Despite being surrounded by a number of houses, Rathmahon’s big trees and high walls, are barrier enough to sight-lines. And you can watch the small ones from the kitchen and know they’re safe.
The first floor has two bedrooms to the front, with the master having windows on two sides and the second bedroom with en-suite and fitted robes.
Two other bedrooms overlook the garden at either side of the main landing with a marble tile main bathroom, which has just been given the 21st century treatment.
Considering the relative rarity of house sales like this, its overall footprint and the location, Malcolm Tyrrell has pitched the bidding guide for Rathmahon at a reasonable level.
Houses close to the €1 million bracket have been selling well, if quietly, throughout the city this year - including the record-breaking €1.3 million for a house in Laburnum Lawn, off the Model Farm Road - a trend which should continue into the autumn.
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