One of the first homes built on a luxury estate in Malahide is for sale at €3.5m. Bernice Harrison reports.

From the day in 2000 that Abington in Malahide, north Dublin first went on the market, it was dubbed "the millionaires' development".

It wasn't just the starter price of over €2 million which made it the most expensive scheme in Dublin, it was also the concept behind the unashamedly luxurious scheme.

Abington is made up of enormous detached houses, mostly in Georgian or Victorian style, finished in top-of-the range detail, set on large plots along curved, well- manicured roads.

There's a security barrier at the entrance to the estate and most houses have their own electronic gates to further add to the sense of security and seclusion.

The estate quickly got its share of celebrity kudos when Ronan Keating and his wife Yvonne bought there, followed by Westlife's Nicky Byrne and his wife, the Taoiseach's daughter, Georgina Ahern.

The developers, Parkway, planned 50 houses for the 43-acre wooded site off the Swords Road.

Unusually, the company built half the houses and then sold the remaining sites to people who would build their own houses in consultation with the developers. The owners of number 24 were the second people to move into Abington.

Now 24 Abington is for sale by private treaty through Malahide agent O' Farrell Cleere for €3.5 million. The owners had the site for two years before they worked out the design and layout out of their 442sq m (4,752sq ft) double-fronted house.

The plan originally suggested a six-bedroom layout but the owners preferred to have four very large bedrooms with three en suites.

The square footage makes it one of the smaller houses on the estate but the site, at 0.67 of an acre, is one of the largest; the house has a very large private back garden.

There's also a two-storey detached double garage to the side where the owners have installed a kitchen, a shower room and fitted out the upper floor as a gym complete with mirrored walls.

There's a lot of well-thought out, family friendly space in this house. A spacious and well-planned eat-in kitchen is at the back, opening onto the garden and it is adjacent to a formal diningroom. There's also an office and a playroom as well as two large livingrooms. One of these opens into a timber conservatory.

At the centre of the house, in the room-sized hall, is a sweeping curved staircase and it leads up to a bright spacious landing off which are the four bedrooms. The main room has its own dressingroom which opens into a luxurious en suite. The children's two bedrooms share a bathroom and there's another particularly large bedroom with an en suite shower room.

The decoration and fit-out is very much at the luxurious end of the scale. The owners favour a very traditional style, so there are heavy drapes and rich colours in most rooms.

Zoffany fabrics and Coles wallpaper are used throughout, much of the flooring is Mirabeau hardwood and the kitchen and utility room units are by Chalon, some of it painted a dark green.

Other luxury details include underfloor heating on both levels, French polished interior doors and an integrated vacuum system. Outside there is a sweeping cobble-lock driveway to the front with parking for several cars.

The front and back gardens are landscaped and planted to provide privacy.