Modernised Georgian-style home overlooking Blackrock Park for €2.45m

A house beside Blackrock Park in Blackrock, Co Dublin, that was at various times a school “for the education of young ladies”, a Protestant boarding house and also the home of a famous Irish bell-maker, is something of an original. A large, bright end-of-terrace house in an enclave overlooking Blackrock Park, the Dart line and the sea, Montereau Lodge looks Georgian in style, with handsome bow windows and tall, nearly floor-to-ceiling multi-paned new sash windows with original shutters in most rooms. But built in 1844, it’s a Victorian period property.

It has been modernised, but there’s potential for new owners to make more changes, particularly at basement level. Montereau Lodge, Seafort Parade, Blackrock, Co Dublin, a 3,186sq ft (296sq m) five-bed with a pale pink exterior, is for sale through Sherry FitzGerald for €2.45 million. As a protected structure, it is Ber exempt.

Its location is convenient: Seafort Parade is an enclave of otherwise mostly redbrick homes off Rock Road, opposite Blackrock College, and Montereau is in easy walking distance of Blackrock and Booterstown Dart stations.

Montereau’s bow-shaped front porch opens into a timber-floored hall with matching chandeliers hanging from two centre roses. The drawingroom on the left has two tall windows at the side and a tall, wide bow window in the curved side wall of the house with views of the park and the sea. Walls are painted a deep navyish blue with a pretty white plaster frieze at the top; a grey marble fireplace has colourful tiles inset. A door from here opens into a study floored with terracotta tiles where a tall sash window overlooks the side garden and the sea.

On the right of the front hall, a few steps lead up to a large timber-floored familyroom with two nearly floor-to-ceiling sash windows at the front, a black marble fireplace with a slate hearth and built-in cabinets on each side of the fireplace.

A very wide arch opens into a modern Newcastle Design kitchen/breakfastroom: the island unit – which seats five – and countertops are topped with pale polished granite; there’s a mirror splashback over the countertop. Two sets of French doors open on to a deck in the back garden.

There’s a smart modern toilet at the end of the hall. Upstairs, the long family bathroom off the return has timber-panelled walls and ceiling; it has a clawfoot bath and a shower. Steps lead up from here into the main bedroom, which has the best views in the house. Like the drawingroom below, it has two tall windows at the side and a large bow window looking across the park to the sea and Howth. There are four more bedrooms upstairs, three doubles and a single. One has a floor-to-ceiling arched window facing west. A smart modern shower room in a lobby next to a bedroom at the back is effectively an en suite.

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The basement has a large livingroom – described as a den in the agent’s brochure – with whitewashed walls and high windows and beside it, a large utility room; one of two smaller storage rooms is used as a wine cellar. There’s potential here for new owners to revamp the space as well as potential in a garage at the side of the house.

The garden is relatively modest, given the size of Montereau Lodge – although owners can step straight into Blackrock Park: there’s a lawn at the front and side of the house next to a low stone wall and a gravel path leading behind the garage to the back of the house. Here there’s a two-tiered fairly private space, with a patio at one level and steps leading up to the deck beside the kitchen. There’s room to park three cars in the gravelled front driveway.

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An 1861 ad (in The Irish Times) for the “young ladies” school in Montereau Lodge described it as a “Marine residence … on the Kingstown Line of Railway within three minutes’ walk of open sea bathing and hot and cold baths”. It must have become a private home again after that, as John Murphy, a bell manufacturer based in Thomas Street, died there in 1879. Murphy made bells for churches all over Ireland as well as for the United States and Australia.