House of the week: Douglas Road, Cork €325,000
hat to do with Knockrea Lodge? Knock it? That would be a bit of a shame.
Do it up, and extend a bit? Obvious, but a bit problematic - it sort of faces the wrong direction, with no windows at all to the west, bar a skylight over the central stairs.
Add a second, or main house? Ah, now you could be talking... it’s just how do you make it fit, while still keeping true to the utter zen-like tranquillity in its back and private portions?
The walled grounds here at Knockrea Lodge are in two sections, well tended to the back, ideal for a Shomera, a garden room or small, Japanese-like pagoda or - with good design and siting - even a compact, serenely sited new dwelling.
Knockrea Lodge is an unusual offer, in a great suburban setting, all behind 10-12’ high and old stone and brick walls, bursting with greenery and spring growth, dotted with old beech trees and shrubs, seating areas and bird-song.
Save for the sound of passing cars outside its privacy-ensuring gates on the main Douglas Road, it is indeed the oasis setting that selling agents Lisney bill it as, in their descriptive brochure.
Briefly and previously on the market with other agents, it is now guided at €325,000 by Trish Stokes of Lisney: the property’s one where the value is in the sum of its parts - and the biggest is component the walled and enclosing site.
Originally the lodge to the adjacent 1820s 3,500 sq ft Knockrea House (once called Summerville and for sale three years ago on an acre guiding €1.2m) this pad carries the same property pedigree name as up-market Knockrea Lawn, on the main Douglas Road, and Knockrea Park and Knockrea Drive, off the Ballinlough Road.
Knockrea Lodge is quite, quite special, a retreat from the world once you pass through either its stout and secure pedestrian doorway, or via its car/carriage access gates.
Immediately within is the original c1,100 sq ft lodge, a three-bed two-storey home, facing east, and with a few windows (and ornate fascia) on the end gable by the Douglas Road, facing south, bringing good light into the main living room, and to the bedroom directly overhead.
It’s all in a quite basic condition, has a re-slated roof and some walls patched, but damp is clearly a problem, and it currently has no heating system, other than open fireplaces.
It’s a house where wrapping it all in external insulation might prove effective, if sensitively done. There’s probably scope to extend on the far/inner gable, but again, thanks to the high walls behind to the west this won’t get much light. And, if you add on in front for southerly light, you may restrict car access/turning.
There’s ‘windows of opportunity’ on other parts of the split grounds of c 0.07 of an acre upon which to build, but this would mean interfering with long-established trees, shrubs and bowers, so moving things on really just requires a degree of sensitivity from a designer/architect landscaper.
That’s not to say it won’t be bought by someone immune to its charms, and just seeing it as a site for a handful of townhouses, but access to the road and drains on the site may prove a barrier to anything more than one or two homes here.
So, as Knockrea Lodge come back on the 2015 Spring market, there’s opportunity here, and early interest is coming from private buyers who see scope for a special home, and who treat the €325k guide as site value for such a location, close both to the city and to Douglas, suggests Trish Stokes, along with some builder/speculative inquiries too.
Could this old-fashioned one-of-a kind, one-off become a two-some?
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