Put your name on original at Hettyfield

NOT only can you make your own mark on this Hettyfield, detached Douglas home, you also get the chance to name it.

It is a rare enough thing to find a house of a certain vintage (in this case, mid-1900s) without a name, but it seems the name went ‘over the hedge’, or the wall at least when the vendors downsized, and built anew on the side garden.

With their new home called Oakfield built, to a contemporary look, they are now selling their older house, a four-bed detached house in quite original condition, ready for a modernising overhaul.

Estate agent Billy Casey of Casey and Kingston guides it at €800,000, which is one of the lower priced offerings in this most salubrious of suburban settings, but it is tempered with certain realities.

It needs work, the market overall is quiet, and the garden size is now on the truncated size given that half of it has been built on.

But, 8A Hettyfield has location in spades (Douglas village is a few minutes’ walk, as is a range of schools) and an essentially sound structure, with side attached garage giving extension potential.

Despite the cachet of the house and its address, a lot of Hettfield houses aren’t big enough for many of today’s trading up buyers, so this is a house that is almost certainly going to grow. At present, it has a hall with guest WC off it, two reception rooms with tiled fireplaces, kitchen and pantry, overhead is the main bathroom and two of its four bedrooms are close to single size.

It has mature gardens, and a shed plus a pond.

In the same leafy vicinity, another four-bedromed Hettyfield house has returned to the market after it went for sale in June 2007.

Marylands, also four-bedroomed, and detached with a bright sun-room addition to the back, was ‘sale agreed’ after going on the market on a 0.4 acre site, guided at €1.6 million, a price which reflected its further site potential with scope for at least one other dwelling.

The builder-buyer pulled back, and Marylands is offered now on a smaller site of just under a quarter of an acre, with a similar portion of the great gardens held back by the vendor as a site. The c 1,600 sq ft house is priced at €875,000 by Dennis Guerin of Frank V Murphy & Co auctioneers.