What do you do when you want to downsize but don’t want to leave your home? When interior designer Gillian Sherrard was faced with that predicament, she decided to split her period Sandycove home in two. Now she is selling one half of Iona House and preparing to renovate the other half to create a new home for her family of four.
The interior architect bought the seafront house in Newtownsmith in 2008 and carried out a big refurbishment on the 1850s property. “The house has a fascinating history,” she says. The De Vesci family owned the land and leased it for development to Samuel Smith, whose company supplied the granite for Dún Laoghaire’s harbour. When she was renovating the house, she found a letter under the floorboards addressed to a maid in the house. It was written in 1923 by the maid’s son in Delaware, telling her about his son’s First Communion.
Sherrard’s redesign won an Institute of Designers in Ireland award in 2015 and the house was a finalist in the Home of the Year competition the following year. The house also had a moment on the big screen when the interiors were used in the movie Love, Rosie, based on Cecilia Ahern’s novel, and starring Lily Collins of Emily in Paris fame.
“I remember my niece ringing me from the centre of London, telling me that our house was on the side of a double-decker red bus advertising Love, Rosie,” she says. “I think it was the big, bright kitchen, the natural light and all the space that attracted them. Lily Collins was wonderful, really professional,” she says. “And what a work ethic she had, starting at 5am and working right through to the evening.”
She was fascinated to see how the set decorator Judy Farr transformed the house. Farr, who was nominated for an Oscar for The King’s Speech, bought several decanters in a charity shop in Dún Laoghaire and made them into a chandelier for the diningroom table. Sherrard asked the director if she could keep the chandelier after filming, but was told no. “Then at the end of the movie, a box arrived at the front door, and it was the chandelier.”
The house has served the family well since then, but now the couple’s two children are young adults and their needs have changed. “The original house is so big [325sq m – 3,500sq ft] and I’ve watched my parents struggling to maintain a large property as they age and I just didn’t want to be in that situation,” she says. “It’s really, really hard work to keep the maintenance up and if you don’t keep on top of it, it starts deteriorating quickly.”
She briefly considered selling and buying a smaller house, but found few options locally. It’s easy to see why she was reluctant to leave the area; everything is within walking distance, from the Dart to the shops in Glasthule to the Forty Foot. She can carry her kayak across the road and paddle over to Dalkey Island if the mood takes her. “Also, I love all the neighbours and the kids have their friends in the area. It would have been really difficult to lose all that.”
After a lot of thought, she decided to split the house vertically. Iona House – the house for sale – now has three bedrooms downstairs and living quarters upstairs, with the kitchen opening on to the split-level back garden. She has also secured planning permission for a mews, or home office, at the end of that garden. At night, the lit-up stained glass windows from St Paul’s Church in Glasthule illuminate the back garden. “It’s a unique house, with the sea at the front and the church at the back,” she says.
Work has not yet begun on her new home, but it will have three bedrooms downstairs and the living area upstairs, with the kitchen facing the sea. “I will be looking out at the East Pier, the Forty Foot and Howth. I work from home and I think it really helps your creativity when you are looking out at the sea.”
Iona House 
Iona House 
Iona House 
Iona House
A 50sq m extension on her new house will bring it to 170sq m. “It will be smaller than what we had, but I think sometimes it’s better to live in a smaller space if it’s really well considered and designed. The extension is a game-changer as it allows me to put a hallway in, a staircase and a diningroom.”
Planning permission was surprisingly easy, given the age of the house. She had a pre-planning meeting with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and would recommend that to anyone considering a similar project. “Usually it takes eight weeks for a decision, but the decision came in six weeks, full planning permission with very few conditions.” To a passerby, the only indication that the house has become two houses will be a new front door to the right of the original front door.
She worked with a structural engineer when it came to planning a firewall, dividing the two homes. “I also employed Wave Dynamics, an acoustics company, just to double check that I wouldn’t get any sound coming through.”
When it came to the legalities of splitting the property, which is freehold, in two, she says her solicitor handled it all. “All she needed were the title deeds, land registry map and planning permission. She split the portfolio, so now there are two separate deeds. It was very straightforward.”
After years of designing other people’s homes, she is really enjoying planning this particular project. Her priority is to create an energy-efficient home and she will install a heat pump, solar panels and lots of eco-friendly sheep wool insulation. “I want to go for all the new technology, an invisible hob, a pantry, all the things that I’ve been doing for the last 30 years in other clients’ houses,” she says.
The design of her new, smaller back garden means she’ll never have to mow the lawn again, which makes her very happy. It’s a long way off yet, but she says it would be easy to grow old in this home. “The beauty of living here is that you don’t need a car, so when you get old, you can just walk around and get your pint of milk. There’s a lovely community, a lot of artistic and creative people in the area. I think the sea attracts them.”
She encourages anyone living in a large period house to think ahead and be open to the idea of dividing the house when it comes to downsizing. “I know three family members who inherited a large house and split it into three homes. That works really well. All the cousins are growing up with each other. You don’t have to have babysitters. It’s a proper community.”
Iona House 
Iona House 
Iona House
She says a project like this will leave the homeowners with capital, at a time when they might be thinking of retiring and maybe spending time in a warmer climate. Or they might want to help their adult children, as some “are the first generation to have less money than their parents”.
Couples going through a divorce might also find it helpful, she says. One parent could keep the children in the family home while the sale of the rest of the house would help the other parent to move elsewhere.
“I just hope more people do the same thing, instead of moving into new builds. As the late architect Hugh Wallace always used to say, it’s about using our existing stock of buildings instead of sprawling out into the suburbs. It’s a win-win situation for everybody and hopefully it will catch on.”
Iona House 
Iona House Iona House is on sale through John O’Sullivan Property Consultants (josp.ie) with an asking price of €1.55 million. Ber C1 sherrarddesign.com