Carrickmines/€1.6m: A secluded flat-roofed Art Deco-style house in Carrickmines, designed for himself in 1947 by architect Brendan O'Connor, a student of Michael Scott, is full of quirky original details.
In the livingroom, for example, there is a porthole window, just above and to the right of the fireplace, set into the Howth stone chimneybreast. And in a corner of the livingroom is a window with inset shelves, an idea repeated in the main bedroom upstairs. There are parquet floors in most rooms.
It is these details, plus the sheer size and brightness of a house with walls of glass looking over a one-and-a-half acre lawn, which are likely to attract buyers. Carricail, Glenamuck Road, has a guide of €1.6 million prior to auction on March 11th through Lisney.
The 302 sq m (3,259 sq ft)five/six-bedroom house is just down from the junction of Brennanstown Road and Brighton Road on Glenamuck Road, nearly opposite the entrance to Carrickmines Tennis Club. It is close to the controversial M50 Carrickmines Castle site. Glenamuck Road is to be widened, but only a sliver - about 10 ft - of land at the end of Carricail's long gravelled drive will be taken, according to agent David Bewley.
The drive leads to a large turning circle in front of the house. The front door opens into a long narrow hall which leads to the livingroom, kitchen and diningroom at one end and to a large bright family room at the other. The large kitchen, one of the few rooms at the front of the house, needs to be refurbished. Most of the other rooms are at the back, with huge windows overlooking the lawn. The back of the house faces south, and on a bright morning, sunlight floods the rooms. Glass doors from both hall and livingroom open into the circular diningroom which has an Art Deco-style built-in sideboard with mirrors above it.
Up open-tread stairs, the main bedroom is more or less directly over the diningroom but is cantilevered out to increase its space. It has an en suite bathroom and dressingroom. There are four more bedrooms and a study on this floor. The white reeded wooden doors here are the originals. Separate stairs lead down to the kitchen level.
There are peaceful views of the Dublin mountains from the top floor; new roads and the motorway site are not visible.
Outside, the long lawn leads down to an area full of cherry trees and eventually peters out into a wilderness of brambles.
At the front of the house is a separate studio apartment with a bedroom, shower room, and kitchen/sittingroom.
The owner of Carricail is the third generation of his family to live in a flat-roofed house - his grandfather built the Art Deco-style houses on the seafront in Clontarf, and his father a flat-roofed house in Blackrock. Carricail has an all-copper roof.
The house needs modernisation, but the guide is modest enough, given its size and location. Houses built 10 or so years ago in nearby Brennanstown Vale - which Carricail backs onto - can command up to €3 million.
