“I think this is one of the most beautiful places I ever saw,” said Cardinal Newman when he rented a house in Dalkey for a two-month holiday in September 1854. Number 2 Mount Salus Road was a fairly new house then, one of a pair built in 1841 high on a hill overlooking Killiney Bay, with views taking in Dalkey Island, Howth and the Wicklow mountains.
A little less than 100 years later, Trinity College's regius professor of Greek, WB Stanford, was equally impressed and bought the grand semi-detached Victorian house in 1944. One of the present owners, Melissa Webb, grew up there and in 1985 she and her husband Michael moved from their own house nearby into number 2, raising their four children there. (One of them is author Sarah Webb, currently writer-in-residence in Dún Laoghaire's Lexicon library.)
It is, they say, a great family house and it’s not hard to see why: the house itself is large at 343sq m (3,698sq ft) with five bedrooms – and the gardens which sweep steeply up behind the house are a wonderful children’s playground. Lots of parties and a family wedding were held in the gardens, a mixture of lawns and woodland running behind several neighbouring houses.
Paths lead around it past ponds, through trees and masses of rhododendrons which flower red, white and purple in summer. A bench near the top of the garden – from where there are panoramic sea views – is a favourite place for a morning coffee. The gardens stretch far back up to a right of way that links Torca Road to Knocknacree Road, with a gate opening on to it.
Mews attached
Number 2 Mount Salus stands on 1.07 acres with a small mews attached, and is for sale by private treaty through Lansdowne Partnership for €3.25 million.
The handsome Victorian – a listed building with many original features – was upgraded when the Webbs moved in in the 1980s, but new owners will likely further modernise areas like the kitchen and bathrooms, possibly revamping a number of rooms at the back of the house to create a modern open-plan living space. (Number 1 Mount Salus was given this kind of modern makeover before being sold at auction in 2005 for over €4.45 million.)
The large front entrance lobby has ornate cornicing and a centre rose. An inner door opens into the front hall, with the drawingroom on the left and the diningroom on the right. These are the two most impressive rooms in the house: the dual aspect drawingroom has a tall bay window at the front, and two windows at the side, with excellent views over Dalkey Island and over to Bray. The red-wallpapered diningroom is a smaller room, with a matching bay window. Both have striking, elaborate centre roses, cornicing and large marble fireplaces; windows have working shutters.
The striking yellow kitchen/breakfastroom is behind the diningroom off the end of the hall. A number of rooms at the back of the house include the original kitchen, with the space for a large range still there.
The first-floor return accommodates a TV/family room, toilet and a library which opens into a small conservatory leading onto the back lawn. There are five bedrooms on the top floor and a family bathroom. The main bedroom, which has a small en suite shower room, is dual aspect, with views of both Howth and Bray.
There’s a small two-storey mews beside the house – once the stables – with a double bedroom on the ground floor and an open-plan kitchen/livingroom upstairs.
Mount Salus Road is a pretty private cul-de-sac of about 10 houses off Knocknacree Road in Dalkey, its entrance framed by pillars with large open gates. Number two is more than halfway along it, with lots of space for parking to the front.
