Jamor Developments made headlines when it bought a 19th century Pembroke Estate cottage with no indoor bathroom on Merrion Road in the late 1990s for €180,000. It made headlines again a few years later when it sold the modern house it built beside the original cottage for a record €500,000 at auction. The newbuild was externally a replica of the cottage: the senior planning officer of Dublin City Council had insisted that Jamor faithfully replicate the original brick detail.
Since then, the Earl of Pembroke’s redbrick detail has become a signature of the high-end newbuilds that Jamor’s owner specialises in constructing. He believes strongly that the exterior finish is as important as the interior; this is evident in Carrigart, a house he bought in 2004 as his family home and completely rebuilt. Nothing but the gable walls of the 1950s house at 3 Grove Avenue, Blackrock, Co Dublin, purchased for €950,000, remains. The €750,000 rebuild was completed to a very high spec, including, for example, walnut floors and solid teak doors.
Now he’s moving to a house he built in Donnybrook, and Carrigart, a 259sq m (2,790sq ft) detached five-bed, is for sale for €1.95 million through Mullery O’Gara. It has a B3 BER and is in walk-in condition.
The house is modern but built in period style. Interconnecting reception rooms opening off the wide front hall, have, like the hall, elaborate cornicing and centre roses. The livingroom at the front has a marble mantelpiece (sourced from a house on Morehampton Road), double-glazed sash windows and double doors to a slightly smaller family room which has a limestone mantelpiece.
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There’s a good-sized study (which could be a bedroom) on the left of the hall. An archway halfway down the hall leads past a downstairs toilet to the bright L-shaped open-plan livingroom/diningroom/kitchen. The kitchen area has a pink-tiled floor, polished black granite island and countertops, and a door to the garden. The walnut-floored dining area opens on to the back garden via French doors.
There are four bedrooms upstairs off a wide landing. The main bedroom has lots of storage, with fitted wardrobes and shelving as well as a walk-in wardrobe with a roof light. Its en suite shower room is fully marble-tiled. Two smaller doubles have built-in single beds as well as fitted wardrobes, desks and shelving. A single bedroom could be a study or child’s nursery.
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The family bathroom has a marble-tiled floor, part-tiled walls, shower and a Jacuzzi bath.
More stairs lead up to an attic fitted as a double bedroom with Velux windows. There is under-eaves storage.
The back of the house, like the front, is redbrick. A sandstone patio opens on to an artificial grass lawn. There’s room to park up to three cars in the gravelled and paved front garden behind electronic gates.
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