Writer Polly Devlin is selling her Dublin home, a Georgian terraced three-bedroom house with a self-contained garden level apartment at 67 Waterloo Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. It is expected to fetch over £750,000 at auction on November 3rd. Ms Devlin has used the house as a base for her frequent visits to Ireland over the last nine years. Her home is in Somerset, where she and her husband, Andy Garnett, have a large country house. She has recently purchased a house in France and plans to spend more time there. Ms Devlin bought the Waterloo Road house sight unseen in 1990, travelling from Belfast to the auction in Buswells Hotel at the eleventh hour. The auctioneer, Dermot Herlihy, who is also handling the sale this time around with joint agents Hamilton Osborne King, showed her through the house for the first time after the auction. It had been divided into three flats for many years and few of its original features had survived. Now, immaculately renovated with all its windows, floors and ceilings renewed, the house is in walk-in condition. It will appeal to buyers who want a period home but who don't want a long and costly restoration. Fully renovated period houses in the area have performed particularly well at auction in recent months. Last week, a larger four-bedroom house at 61 Wellington Road sold for £1.7 million while nearby at Upper Leeson Street, a fully-restored four-bedroom house fetched £1.4 million under the hammer.
Number 67 is a smaller house but it is a quintessential Dublin townhouse with its lofty hallway and fine interconnecting reception rooms. There is a sunny kitchen in the rear return and it has a door leading to a back garden crammed with decorative shrubs and climbing roses.
There are two bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs and the ground floor has a sittingroom, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. This is a very feminine house where the decorative principle could be described as "more is more". Paintings are hung right up to the ceiling on richly coloured walls - pistachio in the drawingroom and warm red in the study behind it. The kitchen has country style cream painted units and colourful tiling. Upstairs, the effect is even more cluttered and charming. The guest bathroom on the return has chintzy walls and a huge, old, free-standing bath. The main bedroom is a riot of cream and blue toile de Jouy, a theme that follows through into the en suite bathroom. The atmosphere is one of luxury and comfort, but it is also an easy to run home. "It was designed so that you could walk in, throw a few switches and everything works," says Polly Devlin.
