A grand Victorian five-bed, Bartra at 56 Eglinton Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4, which first came on the market in 2015 for €3.75 million, is back for sale for €3.25 million – a price drop of €500,000. “We’ve loved the house,” say its owners, Kieran and Olive O’Rourke, “and hope someone else falls in love with it as we did.”
They bought it in 1992, when it needed total refurbishment: reroofing, rewiring and damp-proofing the garden level as well as putting in double-glazed sash windows at the front, cutting traffic noise from busy Eglinton Road. They also fitted out the garden level as Kieran’s consulting rooms for his medical practice. As he has now retired and their children are grown, the couple unsurprisingly want to downsize.
Bartra, a three-storey over garden-level five-bed with about 465sq m (5,000sq ft), is one of six semi-detached houses – numbers 56-66 Eglinton Road – built in the 1880s by a developer for himself and his five children. Number 56 is the only one that is double-fronted.
It has the grand style of its period, with ceiling coving and cornicing, large marble fireplaces and tall windows as well as less usual details, such as the filigree wrought-iron panels on either side of the front door, originally intended to let breezes into the house, now protected by glazed shutters. It has an imposing entrance, with a brick arch over the tiled entrance porch opening into a red-carpeted entrance hall.
The house been very well maintained, but new owners may want to redecorate in a more modern style. They also have the choice of retaining the garden level as offices or revamping it: it could be separate living accommodation – it has its own outside entrance – or part of the family home, with a new open-plan kitchen/livingroom. The original white brick-tiled chimneybreast is still in one of the downstairs offices. Bartra is not a listed building.
Currently the kitchen/breakfastroom, located on the right of the front hall, is attractive – with cream units, black quartz-topped countertops and a cream Aga – but a relatively modest size. It opens through wide double doors into a livingroom at the front of the house with two very tall windows.
The proximity of the kitchen to the large interconnecting diningroom and drawingroom on the other side of the front hall was handy for entertaining, says Olive, although new owners might revive the dumbwaiter, concealed in a cabinet in the corner of the diningroom if they move the kitchen back downstairs. The two handsomely furnished formal reception rooms are both dual aspect; the diningroom at the front has a tall bay window.
The house has a four-storey return, with somewhat old-fashioned bathrooms on most of them and a utility room at the end of the first-floor hall. All five bedrooms opening off the upstairs landing are doubles. The main bedroom, over the diningroom, has a bay window, two side windows and an en suite shower room.
A large cedar of Lebanon tree stands in the sizeable back garden, which has two patio areas and a lawn, ending in a gravelled parking area with room for several cars opening from a lane off Eglinton Road. There’s also off-street parking at the front beside a neat lawn bordered by flowerbeds.
Bartra is for sale asking €3.25 million through Sherry FitzGerald. The agency has just sold nearby number 62 Eglinton Road, a smaller 232sq m (2,500sq ft) four-bed, for close to its €2.5 million asking price.
