When author Yvonne Cullen bought 2 Eden Road Lower in 2002 it had been rented to the same family for 100 years and while in need of complete modernisation – the toilet was in the back garden, for example – she found its charm both beguiling and inspiring.
She didn't use one room as a writing base but rather different rooms, where the walls have accommodated the verse in her book of poems Invitation to the Air, and the pages of her forthcoming non-fiction work, A Winter Quarters, a book about caravans, travelling shows and home.
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Cullen was keen to keep the cottage, built in the 1840s as an estate dwelling for the Longford De Vesci estate, true to its artisan cottage roots. As a writer on a limited budget she had architect Simon Walker draft plans, and over the next three years she renovated the original house, adding an extension in 2005. While she is “remorseful” about the loss of the ornamental cabbages and hollyhocks that had grown there for generations, the property is now a decent size, measuring 78sq m (840sq ft).
Sliding doors
Cullen also reconfigured the layout, using sliding doors to successfully close off rooms when she shared the property, giving each resident a greater sense of privacy.
With the porch hidden from view from the road by a fuschia hedge, the front door opens into the living room, a vaulted space with good ceiling heights and deep-set, cottage-style windows.
Cullen stripped the original pine panelled doors back to the wood and these lead into two of the property’s three bedrooms, a large single to the front that may accommodate a queen-size bed; and the main, which overlooks the small, west-facing back yard.
Cullen is downsizing and hoping to build a writers’ retreat on Inishbofin island off the Connemara coast, where she has held writing holidays for the last 15 years and is hoping to eventually spend more time.
Echoes of the island’s vernacular architecture can be seen throughout the cottage, with contemporary twists on rustic living throughout. The large barn door – found at Mac’s Warehouse and reputed to have come from Clancy Barracks – that slides back to reveal a small galley kitchen lit from above by a Velux window is the most obvious example, but there are rustic themes throughout.
Breakfast area
Down the hall a small breakfast area can also be screened off by closing a second large sliding door – this one is amber orange. Opposite is a decent-sized bathroom with a free-standing claw-foot bath and a charming sink surround made of pebbles.
To the rear of the house is the property’s finest room. Currently set up as a bedroom this light-filled space could make a second living room or eat-in kitchen cum den. This would reduce the number of bedrooms to two but would give two strong living spaces and scope for more storage.
The property is asking €645,000 through Sherry FitzGerald. Number 3, the cottage next door, backing on to a builders’ yard and needing work at the time sold in January 2015 for €350,000.
There’s a terrific lack of inventory in the area, says agent Vincent Finnegan, who sold number 3 and says he would now expect to sell the same house for at least €100,000 on top of its 2015 asking price, before including the value of renovation work.
“What you have in Glasthule is a market operating outside the norm with downsizers and young families bidding against each other for houses,” he says.
