Eden House

I was out in The Eden House pub on Grange Road in Rathfarnham during the week. To all intents and purposes it looks like a typical frothy Edwardian summer house with a 1980s dolls house makeover, and its grounds since absorbed by serried ranks of suburbia and link roads.

© NIAH

It’s only when you approach the main entrance that things get more interesting, with an off-centre entrance, a robust Georgian-panelled timber door and a block-and-start stone surround.

Most suspect. Once you get inside, there’s no indication at all as to the origins of the building, having undergone a thorough, and by all accounts well-designed makeover in the past couple of years, including an open plan layout in place of the original rear rooms.

Nonetheless, the original sequence of drawing and living rooms still survive to the front, comprising lounges. These are also largely altered. That is however, until one enters the smallest of these in the centre of the house. Astonishingly, you enter an intimate early-mid 18th century hallway, panelled top to toe in raised and fielded wainscoting, complete with corner fireplace and a pulvinated marble chimneypiece!

Extraordinary stuff. A wider shot from The Eden House website.

Strangley, the website only dates the house to what was clearly only a remodelling of the Victorian period:

“This Victorian house is steeped in tradition and history. Built in 1863 it was formerly a Country Manor house, which along with Rathfarnham Park, Highfield Manor, Grange House and the Demense of Marlay, formed part of the extensive townland of Harold’s Grange.”

A plethora of planning applications for the site over the past few years has not made a single reference to the early origins of the house, or indeed any assessment of the building for that matter, in spite of its protected status.

Anyone know anything else about it? The bowed ends may be c. 1800 additions, with one featuring a rather strange neoclassical interior which I’m embarrassed to say I couldn’t date off-hand to c. 1900 or c. 1980 😮