The downsizing phase on Orwell Park continues with number 55 the latest to come on the market. One of Rathgar’s leafiest roads, it is lined with very large family homes with substantial gardens, and recent years have seen several sales as homeowners, who have been there for decades while their families were growing up, move on to smaller properties.
The houses differ in style with number 55 a semi-detached Victorian redbrick featuring a pretty timber-trimmed porch and accommodation spread over three floors. It is on the more popular side of the road because the back of the houses are south-facing. It was the rear garden at number 55 that sold the current owners on the house 25 years ago – the property sits on a quarter of an acre and they have nurtured it ever since.
Indeed about 10 years ago they installed a Shomera to the side, to be used as a garden room, its glazed wall looking out over the lush greenery, to more fully appreciate the garden in peace.
Cleaned and repointed
The 267sq m (2,873sq ft) house does not feel, or indeed look like a typical downsizer property. Ongoing decoration and visible maintenance – the redbrick façade was cleaned and repointed in recent years and a new roof added – mean that new owners will have little to do.
One of the unusual features that the current owners had to remove when they moved in was a lift. As well as restoring the decorative plasterwork and finding suitable chimneypieces for the main reception rooms, they decorated the house to reflect its 1880s origins with dark colours and polished floorboards.
They also added a small extension to the rear, opening out to the garden to make space for an open-plan dining and seating area off the kitchen. In more recent years the decoration has taken on a less-cluttered, more Scandinavian feel with the interconnecting reception rooms and hall floored in new lime-washed timber planks to replace the draughty original floorboards. A calm bright colour scheme is carried throughout – apart from the exuberant green in the kitchen.
High-end kitchen
A Dalkey Design kitchen was commissioned for both the kitchen and utility – the units are now painted a cool blue and include a wine store, larder and other high-end kitchen features. The couple live in the house as a four-bed property – all bedrooms are sizeable doubles – and they now use two smaller rooms, originally former maids’ rooms, on the first-floor return as home offices. These could once again be used as bedrooms depending on the needs of new owners who are likely to be a family trading up.
There is off-street parking for several cars to the front.
Extension and renovation work continues apace on next door, number 56 Orwell Park which sold in 2018 for €2.515 million, while number 57 sold in 2017 for €2.4 million.
Agent Pat Mullery of DNG is selling 55 Orwell Park seeking €2.75 million.
