Ashton Lodge, on Kilgobbin Road, Sandyford, is a semidetached house that started life about 200 years ago as a simple two-bedroom cottage. In the past 30 years, it has had several additions, including two further bedrooms and a separate two-bedroom granny flat. It now comprises 2,000 sq ft in a half acre of garden.

Scheduled for auction on November 3rd through Hamilton Osborne King, it is expected to fetch over £575,000.

The house lies partially hidden behind a granite wall that screens it from the busy road. At the front there is a gravelled drive with room for five or six cars.

The small entrance hall is floored in granite flags found under the floorboards during recent renovations. Granite is a recurring theme here: there is a granite mantel in the sittingroom, while the garden has various granite walls and borders, as well as bulges of protruding bedrock.

There are three reception rooms downstairs, along with a small study, a spacious eat-in kitchen, a sun room, a large utility room and a lavatory.

The drawingroom and dining room are at the rear of the house, which faces southwest. Both rooms have large picture windows, in the first case overlooking the garden, and in the second, looking into the sun room.

The third reception room is an open-plan living room which forms a link between the different parts of the house.

Upstairs, there are four very bright bedrooms and a family bathroom. The main bedroom has an en suite bathroom. Enormous windows in this and the adjacent bedroom give excellent views of the carefully-tended garden.

The granny flat has a separate entrance, and it may also be reached by an internal door off the utility area. There are two bedrooms, a large lounge with kitchenette, and a shower room.

The garden, mostly behind the house, is a lovely old-fashioned space with lots of lawn, a pond, some well-stocked borders, a vegetable patch and plenty of mature trees. A secret white garden makes a relaxing hideaway at the rear, with yet another garden - a linear woodland - behind that. A greenhouse has a productive grape vine.