A "prosaic red brick home looking out to the Dublin hills", is how historian Jim Ring, author of Childers' biography, described number 12 Bushy Park Road, a Victorian semi-detached property at the Rathgar end of this street.
The property once belonged to Erskine Childers snr, author of Riddle in the Sands and a leading Irish republican in the Civil War for which he was executed by the authorities of nascent Free State in 1922 (see panel ).
The house has seen some alterations to it since then. The drawing room is where Childers's wife, Mary (Molly) Alden Osgood Childers, held press briefings, and the room retains its original sense of grandeur. It still feels like a salon in which you could hold court. The walls are covered in a decorative Farrow and Ball wallpaper that the ceiling heights allow and when the fire is lit in the black marble fireplace, it is a room that is hard to leave. Matching sofas on either side of the hearth add to the symmetry.
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Double doors
The previous owner reconfigured the front of the house, moving the location of the front door and installing a much bigger bay window, complete with window seat, into the drawing room. It really adds a sense of balance to the space. Instead of a mirror image interconnecting room to the rear, the rooms are divided by a glass panelled wall with interconnecting double doors leading through to a smaller room that’s still big enough to house a baby grand piano.
A set of French windows open from the room directly to the garden, 36.5m(120ft) of south-facing lawn with high hedges that give it complete privacy. At the far end, hidden from view, is a Shomera behind a creeper-clad exterior. It has been used by the college-going kids of the house as a bar, complete with counter and neon lighting. Outside there’s a hot tub. The boundary hedge abuts the playing fields of High School.
The kitchen is divided into two areas, a cooking area and an eating area that has a support column in the middle of its vaulted roof. This was where another well-known former resident, artist Zita Reihill, used to paint before the studio was knocked through to make the space bigger. Off the kitchen is a utility room and garage and there is a roomy guest toilet under the fine staircase.
Across the hall from the drawing room is another formal room with a bay window. The library has customised book cases with a matching mirror over the mantle.
The first of the property's five bedrooms is on the hall return, where the family bathroom is also located. The third step of the stairs to the first floor has a secret compartment, believed to have once stowed a handgun that Michael Collins gave to Childers, a weapon that in part led to his execution.
The master bedroom runs the depth of the house and has a good-sized en suite bathroom overlooking the front. French windows lead to a lovely square deck perfect for a little private sunshine.
There is a second double at this level, an old-fashioned triple room big enough to house a single and double bed. At the top of the stairs on the first floor return there are two more double bedrooms.
The property measures about 306sq m (3,300sq ft) and is asking €2.35 million through agents Quillsen.
