Sylvanmount House was built in the 1820s as a farmhouse and later expanded to become a "gentleman's residence". It sat on seven acres and was a stud farm when the owners bought in 1976. It was also once the home of Irish writer Katharine Tynan Hinkson, who lived there in 1920 and described it in a letter to a friend as "this delicious little house".
Now the house – which is no longer so little at 253sq m (2,723sq ft) – is for sale for €1.2 million through Knight Frank. The four-bed now sits on half an acre, beside four large modern houses built on its land, some of which was also taken by the nearby M50. Ballybride Road still feels like a quiet country road, despite being close to a motorway. The owners aren't planning on going far – they are moving to a two-bed house nearby.
Over the past 40-plus years, they have made changes to their home, a protected structure described in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage as “an important component of the domestic built heritage of south Co Dublin”.
They’ve maintained its rich period details – centre roses, elaborate cornicing in some reception rooms and in the front hall, original shutters on some windows. They’ve also added some too, like the handsome Bossi-style fireplace in the living room as well as upgrading the central heating and rewiring and replumbing the house.
That said, new owners are likely to want to update Sylvanmount by, for example, revamping and modernising the kitchen/breakfast room and conservatory at the back of the house: the kitchen has a tiled floor, beamed ceiling, room for a good-sized table and a utility room and downstairs toilet off it.
A wrought-iron gate opens into a gravelled driveway, which sweeps around to lawns at the front of the house, with lots of space for parking. Most of the land is at the front; there’s also a small garden at the side of the house.
A glazed, tiled front porch opens into the front hall. The drawing room to the right has two full-length sash windows, elaborate ceiling cornicing and opens into the dining room, which has a tall, deep bay window. A sitting room to the left of the front hall also has a full-length bay window, cornicing, centre rose and marble fireplace. Unusually, a double bedroom with a tiled shower room opens off the sitting room.
Upstairs are three double bedrooms, two of them above the sitting room. The large main bedroom is dual aspect and has a separate dressing room and en suite. There’s a family bathroom and a toilet off the upstairs hall.
Sylvanmount House is a short distance along Ballybride Road from the roundabout junction with Ferndale Road. It is a short drive – and a reasonably easy walk on a pedestrian bridge across the M50 – from here to Shankill village.
