In July, the first of the five houses in the new development on Temple Road in Dartry came on the market.
Called Avanti it was different from the others in the small infill scheme – or indeed anything else on the road – with its cool contemporary design. It has just sold for over its €2.2million asking price. Now Ellington a detached four/five bed with 227 sq m (2,443 sq ft) with an arts and crafts-inspired design is for sale for €2.5million through joint agents DNG and Sherry FitzGerald.
The new houses are built on a two-acre site on what is one of Dublin's priciest residential roads. John Burns, the builder behind Ballsbridge's Shrewsbury Square and now of Manorglen Properties, bought it in 1978 but for nearly four decades it remained a large grassy field beside St Philip's Church prompting much curiosity among locals as to how such a prime site could lay undeveloped for so long.
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Then Burns’s son Johnny, drove the new development on the site which wraps around a vast detached Victorian red brick. It has been cleverly laid so that when it is complete two houses (one being Avanti) will face directly on to the road. The three others share an entrance and are built around a courtyard, mimicking the original Victorian layout where there would have been a stable yard and outbuildings behind “the big house”.
Ellington is the largest house in this private courtyard accessed from a driveway off Temple Road and it’s a very appealing-looking double-fronted detached property that’s two storey at the front and three at the rear. For its design, Ellington, with its granite detailing and red brick, takes its cues from its neighbour, the pretty choir arts and crafts building of St Philip’s Church.
At hall level – off a good-sized bright hall with walnut parquet flooring and a round window – there are two interconnecting reception rooms on the left with panelling and attractive working fireplaces and on the right another room which could be a bedroom but is mostly likely to be used as a study.
The floors in the reception rooms are walnut and the back room– laid out as a dining room – has a most unusual feature, a dumb waiter to bring food up from the kitchen downstairs.
Upstairs off a good-sized landing are three double bedrooms with fitted wardrobes and one with an en suite, another sharing the main bathroom Jack and Jill style.
The real interest is downstairs – the floor that faces out to the south east facing rear and which can’t be seen from the front – and it’s where, if a family buys this house as is likely, most time will be spent.
There’s a very large open-plan kitchen and dining area with two sets off double doors giving access out to the patio. The Dalkey Design painted timber kitchen features a large marble-topped island unit. The flooring throughout this area is oak. There’s a small utility room. Across the small hall is a room that again could be a bedroom – it’s beside a bathroom – and opens directly out onto the patio at the rear.
Outside the sunken patio is a very private space – roomy enough for a large dining table and several loungers. Metal steps lead up to Ellington’s garden which has been laid in lawn and didn’t need much else because the site provided granite walls and mature trees.
Ellington is built on the second largest parcel of land on this two- acre site and as well as the garden that wraps around the site, there is parking for five cars behind electric gates.
The two other houses in the courtyard will be complete in early 2016 and the final house to be built on the site, and the largest, will be an imposing 470sq m (5,090sq ft) Victorian-style redbrick, made to look like its neighbours on this Dartry road. That house is due to be completed in June 2016.
