A house hidden away on a lane off Knocknacree Road in Dalkey was once a schoolroom for children of the grand Victorian house in front of it, according to its owners, who bought it at auction in 1987 for £32,000.
Nine years ago, they dramatically extended the property, which sits sideways to the lane on a sloping site: Waterford conservation architect John Stewart created a house that still has a period flavour but includes a large modern kitchen, upstairs livingroom, and bedrooms with smart en suites.
The result is a house with an unusual layout and some distinctive and attractive features, like the oval skylight over the beautiful curving staircase leading to an octagon-shaped landing – set out as a reading space – with another deep skylight above it. The entrance to the house is a gate in the lane, leading down steps in a very private garden to an almost hidden front door. The whole property is very secluded.
South End, with 230sq m (2,475sq ft) of space and four/five bedrooms is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for €1.495 million. There are just three houses on the lane. Gorse Hill House, a large Victorian at the top of the lane, sold for €1.65 million in 2013.
When South End was advertised for sale in 1987, the brochure described it as “old world cottage style”. The vendor was Kathleen Deane Oliver, who lived in Monte Vista, the Victorian house in front. The drawingroom of South End is very much as it was then, a long wide room with two wide sash windows, a large black cast-iron fireplace and pitch pine floors.
The kitchen/diningroom on the other side of the hall is in the new part of the house: it’s a smart and comfortable space stretching from one side of the house to the other. The kitchen, painted in Farrow & Ball French grey, has oak units, a large island with granite countertop, a six-ring gas cooker fitted into a mosaic-tiled chimneybreast and a beige tiled floor. There’s a utility room off it. The diningroom has an oak floor and a deep bay window with a window seat overlooking the garden.
Upstairs are four bedrooms, two doubles – one of them en suite – and two singles, and a livingroom/guest room that could be a fifth bedroom; it has a smart fully-tiled shower room and a floor-to-ceiling bay window with views of the sea. The main bedroom also has a wide floor-to-ceiling bay window overlooking the garden and a fully-tiled en suite.
There’s a very large deck in the garden, with a gazebo-style dining space at one side, and a pond at the other. Steps lead from here to a large Shomera, once a children’s playroom, now fitted out as a teenage space, with room for musical equipment and a pool table. The very private garden is well planted with bushes.
There’s room to park several cars in a courtyard to the other side of the house, accessed via a separate entrance.
