Foxrock: €2.1m With its original features intact, a house designed by Sir Richard Orpen makes an impressive home, says Rose Doyle
Designed by Sir Richard Orpen and built in 1900, "Suncroft", Mart Lane, Foxrock, Co Dublin is one of what an early edition of The Irish Builder described as the architect's "colony of pretty, red tiled, gabled houses in the fashionable residential district of Foxrock".
On more than a half acre of mature gardens, Suncroft's seclusion behind high old trees and hedging adds to the period mood in a house with a great deal of shining, dark wood, a reception hallway which has both a fireplace and ornate staircase and dramatic bow window overlooking the front lawn.
With its original features almost completely intact, "Suncroft" has four bedrooms, three reception rooms and kitchen/breakfastroom in a floor area of some 241 sq m (2,600 sq ft). Arthur Davis, who is looking after the sale for agent Harper O'Grady, is quoting a guide of €2.1 million in advance of Suncroft's auction on March 9th.
The sense of period is immediate in the sheltering evergreens and in Suncroft's rambling, many-windowed style. Inside, the reception hallway mirrors the unchanged quality of most of the rest of the house. The floor is of polished oak and the walls covered in suitably blossom-sprigged wallpaper.
The dark wood panelled ceiling is also beamed, the doors have their original finger-plates and the stairs their original, barley-sugar balustrades. The brick fireplace is gas-fired and a neat bow window opposite makes a nice reading/writing niche.
Off the hallway there is the relatively recent addition of a walk-in cloakroom and separate guest toilet. An under-stair "glory hole" offers storage space.
As well as having a bow window extending into the garden, the drawingroom has a feature fireplace with deeply recessed marble inset and gas fire. A pantry set into the wall alongside has a set of deep shelves and a door next to the window leads to a sheltered veranda.
The diningroom has a corner fireplace, dado rail and pair of windows overlooking the garden. Ceiling beams and panelling have been painted white. A family room, usefully added to the side of the house, has a gas fire. The kitchen/breakfastroom is the most modernised part of the house but retains the original, tiled chimney breast (now fitted with a cast-iron Gazco fire) and has a range of storage units and worktops in oak and a terracotta, quarry tiled floor.
A sliding glass door leads to the garden and there is a walk-in pantry and utility area with cloakroom and toilet off.
Three of the bedrooms have cast-iron fireplaces and in one an interesting dormer window opens to a viewing balcony overlooking the garden. The same room has a second window over the entrance driveway. The main bedroom also has a couple of windows, as well as built in wardrobes.
A third bedroom has an attic-style sloped ceiling and dormer window while the fourth, on the side-return, has a sloped ceiling with Velux.
The gardens wrap around Suncroft and have trees, shrubs and flower beds around the lawn. An enclosed rear yard has clothes' lines and corrugated iron sheds and there are a couple of detached garages. To the side of the front door, off the gravelled driveway, there is a second, sheltered veranda.
