Claremont Court is an unusual Dublin housing estate. Situated just off the Finglas Road opposite Glasnevin Cemetery, it was built in 1971 by Healy Homes, a pair of brothers who had spent time in the United States and had been influenced by the light and space of new homes, in particular in California’s Palm Springs.
Number 18, a four-bedroom semi of 135sq m / 1,453sq feet, captures that era’s generous sense of space and light.
This is what attracted novelist Gavin Corbett to the house when he bought it in 2017, paying €420,000 for it, according to the property price register. Corbett’s second novel, This Is The Way, won the 2013 Kerry Group Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Encore Award.
The property has a rather fetching arched drive that it shares with the neighbouring house, is set well back from the road and has a very mature cedar tree to the front.
The house opens into a hall in the middle of the property. There’s a formal sitting room to the front which is really a music room and home to Corbett’s impressive vinyl collection, which amounts to thousands of records, all slotted into custom ply shelving. On the turntable is a tune by Spanish-born rhumba king Xaviar Cugat, who grew up in Havana, Cuba. Cugat went on to play the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles where Bing Crosby was the main act, and was band leader for many years at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel. And this sets the tone for the overall look and feel of this retro-fabulous home.
A small sun porch off this room opens out to the front, where there is private dining terrace screened off by a low wall for privacy. It is surrounded by mature specimen trees including a fruitful fig, cordyline and foxglove, also known as a princess or empress tree.
To the rear is a broken plan living, dining cum kitchen. It is on the sofa here that Corbett confesses to writing in “fits and starts”, rather than where you might expect him to be installed – in the fourth bedroom upstairs, a single set out as an office. A Heat Design inset stove anchors the space and underfoot is a recycled maple basketball court floor that came out of a school in Ballymena, Co Antrim.
The room opens out to the garden, which, while north-facing, is private and has a raised deck set protected from the elements by a vertical half-wall painted in a visually warming desert pink.
The sitting room opens through to the kitchen, a long galley and dual-aspect space where the garage once was. Unlike many other converted garages, this has the same decent 2.7m ceiling heights as the rest of the house, and this helps to create a lovely flow through the rooms.
Upstairs there are four bedrooms; three doubles and the aforementioned single. The main bedroom is to the rear and enjoys views of the garden. The D2 Ber-rated property is asking €475,000 through agents Move Home.
