The first houses built on Zion Road in Rathgar were grand Victorian redbricks with basements, but by the 1920s and 1930s when the remaining plots of land along the road were being developed, the middle-class buyers attracted to the area were interested in easier to manage, detached family homes with more bedrooms than was found in older, sometimes large-looking houses, with a garage and good gardens.
No 34 Zion Road – near the entrance to the High School – fit that bill for its first owners. It’s on a third of an acre, back from the road behind mature hedging and a back garden that stretches back more than 50m. (164ft). It was originally a four-bedroom house but was enlarged in the 1960s with a two-storey extension at the back, giving it six bedrooms and 260sq m (2,800sq ft).
Lisney, who are leading a return to the auction rooms, will be auctioning the house on March 5th with an AMV of €1,300,000.
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It’s an executor’s sale and while it was clearly a comfortable and well cared for house for generations, new owners will undoubtedly embark on a major modernising programme. They may extend again at the back – the kitchen is small in proportion to the size of the house and old fashioned, and so needs updating. The garden is so long and wide, taking a bit more off it for a new kitchen won’t have too much impact on it. Or they could keep the footprint and extend into the integrated garage with opens into the house off the hallway.
The layout of the 1920s house is interesting. The hall door is to the side and it opens into a long, wide hallway which leads to the kitchen. There are three reception rooms – the “good” room is to the left and is dual aspect with three wide bay windows, two look out on the front garden. The reception room on the other side of the hall was greatly extended and it has a large picture window looking out on the back garden. There’s also a formal diningroom which may have been the original parlour as it has as a curiosity the original stove.
Upstairs there are six bedrooms, four are doubles, as well as a shower-room, a bathroom and wc. The colours in the sanitary ware in the bathrooms, the cloakroom downstairs and the basins in some bedrooms, which range from turquoise to pink, gives an indication of when the last major renovation was carried out.
To the front of 34 Zion Road are the playing fields of the High School.
