Ballsbridge: €8.5 millionThis very large house has clearly been very well lived in as a comfortable family home, writes Bernice Harrison

For a grand, very large Dublin 4 house, number 20 Burlington Road has clearly been very well lived in as a comfortable family home.

Its owners bought it 30 years ago and, unusually for this terrace, they left the cut-stone coach house at the end of the long garden intact so new owners might now wish to look to develop a couple of mews houses on the site.

The two-storey over garden level house with 350sq m (3,773sq ft) is for sale by Savills Hamilton Osborne King for around €8.5 million.

The impressive redbrick house was built in the mid 1850s and its layout was tailored to more formal times with a room-sized reception hall with double doors opening into an inner hall.

There is a formal livingroom to the front, running the width of the house, which opens into a diningroom. Both have the usual period details with tall ceilings, marble fireplaces and sash windows.

Some years ago the family moved the kitchen from garden level up to this hall level and recently updated it by installing smart contemporary units.

Upstairs there are four bedrooms, a study and an upgraded family bathroom. A growing family meant that what would have been the enormous main bedroom was divided into two smaller rooms and new owners might want to reverse that.

Downstairs at garden level - where the ceilings are a good height - there is a large livingroom to the front and what could either be another bedroom or a family room at the back.

There's also a further bedroom, a utility room, store rooms and a bathroom. As elsewhere in the house, all the main rooms are large.

The long, sunny back garden is charming, beautifully planted and not overlooked. Some years ago a small, brick summer house was built at the end of the garden and there is that double coach house opening out onto Waterloo Lane.

Access to the front is via electric gates and there is parking for several cars.