Given that 1 Cidhmore has a huge 350sqm of internal space, I can only wonder at just how massive the original house must have been before it was divided into five properties.
The former Dundee jute mansion was a retirement home until it was converted into apartments around 25 years ago.
Its address is Perth Road, but it actually sits down a private lane off the main street, giving it great privacy.
David and Elaine Avril bought Number 1 around 21 years ago and were its first owners.
Their property has the original grand entrance vestibule from the main house. Bigger than most modern living rooms, with a mosaic tile floor and stunning decorative ceiling, it makes a powerful first impression.
The main entrance hall beyond is scarcely less impressive. A door to one side leads to the modern dining kitchen. There’s a downstairs WC by the stairs, and a door to the right takes you into a sitting/dining room. Through the other side of that is the most special room in the house.
Stretching almost 30 feet long and more than 19 feet wide, and with an enormous bay window looking out over the Tay, the living room is nothing short of magnificent.
The stunning ceiling has gold filigree painted on its cornicing – according to David, the developers brought an artist from Italy to carry out the fine paintwork during the conversion process.
Upstairs are four bedrooms, a box room and a family bathroom. The master bedroom has proportions almost as grand as the living room. A pair of windows to the front drink in the view, while an east-facing window takes in the morning light. A walk-in cupboard leads through to a large en suite.
Another set of stairs goes up to the attic rooms. The ceilings are too low to count as habitable space, but it provides excellent storage and could easily be used as a reading, study or play space.
The property is heated by a pair of boilers. “You can have one making the downstairs warmer and the other having the bedrooms a bit cooler, which makes it more comfortable and cheaper to run,” David explains.
Each flat in the divided mansion has its own garden and there are communal grounds with a factoring fee. Cidhmore’s grounds run down to Dundee Botanic Gardens, and sit slightly above them so people in the gardens can’t peer in. Past the Botanics, they look across the runway of Dundee Airport to the glittering expanse of the Tay and the hills of Fife beyond.
With all three of their children grown up – and two of them as far away as Vienna and Thailand – David, 58, and Elaine, 57, no longer require such a huge amount of space.
“I’m not sure where we might go but we quite like it in the West End,” David says. “The only thing is we’ve become used to nice big room sizes and our views. I think we might struggle to match what we’ve got now”.
jmckeown@thecourier.co.uk
1 Cidhmore, 490 Perth Road, Dundee is on sale with Thorntons for o/o £475,000.