Changing City:As traditional squares go, the quarter acre communal garden at Edward Square in Donnybrook is on the small side. But then again, nothing of this style has been built in Dublin for over a century and space is at a little bit more of a premium now than it was in the mid-1800s.
The imposing five-floor terraced houses that form the residential square certainly make up for it. Final touches are now being put to the swish development on the former Quaker Hospital site at Bloomfield Avenue, off Morehampton Road.
Built by Gerry Barrett, the man behind the G hotel in Galway, the scheme has 17 Regency-style houses with a traditional square as its centrepiece.
Prior to this, the most recently built housing schemes around a formal garden were the Victorian squares in Rathmines and Ranelagh in the late 1880s - Kenilworth, Grosvenor and Dartmouth squares.
De Vesci Gardens, built in the 1840s around a 4.5-acre garden in Monkstown, is one of the few example of Regency residential squares in Dublin.
The earliest was St Stephen's Green which was laid out as a residential square around a garden in the 1660s, according to Mary Clark, city archivist with Dublin City Council.
Edward Square is laid out mostly in grass with some paving and features a 200-year-old beech tree.
Owners who bought off plans in 2004 will begin to move there in the autumn. Apart from the large stucco houses, there are apartments and mews houses around the back.
A small number of houses are expected to come on the market in the next month through selling agent Felicity Fox. They are likely to go for significantly more than the €4 million they cost when first launched in 2004.
Planning permission to develop 11 large apartments in two period homes, also on the site, has been secured and these are expected to go on the market in the autumn.
