The distant hum of lawnmowers is the only sound that breaks the silence as we stand in the garden of a Foxrock house hidden away off Kerrymount Avenue, where a mix of Edwardian and modern houses are sheltered behind very high walls and hedges close to Foxrock village.
Adelaide is private and very secure, says its publican owner, surrounded on nearly four sides and accessed down a long narrow driveway. He bought the nearly half-acre site, the orchard of neighbouring house Whitegates, in 1985 and built the house named after the Australian city where his wife comes from.
Now the detached 644sq m (6,932sq ft) six-bed on a large garden is for sale for €3.25 million through agent Savills.
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From the outside, Adelaide doesn’t look anything like the size it is. But it is big with an unusual layout: it comes with a large conservatory/garden room, three bedrooms in the main house and three in a self-contained section of the house that can be closed off as a separate annex. Freshly painted, mostly white, and staged for sale by House & Garden Interiors – the vendors moved out some time ago – it’s in walk-in condition.
The long driveway bordered by 20ft hedges opens into a large gravelled space at the front of the house. Double front doors open into a wide double-height front hall with panelled walls, floored with gleaming pale tiles, where a curved staircase on the left rises to a galleried landing.
The downstairs rooms are fairly open-plan and all interconnect, making it a good party house – “There’s been many a shindig,” says the owner. The drawingroom on the right of the front hall has two sets of French windows opening to the garden at the side; a formal dining room is beside it and a wide sliding door opens down a few steps into the huge garden room.
Double-glazed roof
The room is super-bright on this sunny day: it has a soaring double-glazed roof with two ceiling fans, and two walls of windows and French windows opening into the garden.
The Christoff kitchen off it has a breakfast area at one end, a window seat at the other and an island unit with a polished granite countertop between them.
The annex is accessed through an inner hall near the kitchen: it’s self-contained, with a kitchen, shower room, and two/three double bedrooms (one could be a living room) and up a flight of stairs, a long room over the double garage that had been used as a cinema room. The annex could be a granny flat or home office and agent Savills thinks it might suit an embassy looking for accommodation. (The agency has already put out feelers on the embassy circuit.)
In the main house, there’s a double bedroom and a large smart family bathroom at one end of the wide galleried landing; at the other, there’s a parquet-floored sitting area off which are the main bedroom and a small bedroom set out as a nursery.
There are several patio areas around the house and a large well-kept lawn with a stone fountain in it. There’s a striking walnut tree that’s more than 200 years old, says the owner.
Sales have been slow on Kerrymount in the past few years: Heather Lodge, an Edwardian needing modernisation went for sale in April 2018 for €2.45 million and is now seeking €1.65 million; The Bawn, a period house with listed interiors, is still for sale at €6 million nearly a year after going on the market. Charton, next door to Adelaide, was reportedly sold for around €4 million in 2008, then demolished and replaced with a very large modern house.
