Put down some roots in an estate that can never grow
Built only five years ago, this is a property with an absolute rarity value - the chances of getting planning permission to build in a mature woodland are as thin as a new sapling.
Brookwood is a necessarily select development of only 10 houses within a 78-acre mature woodland - and the word ‘select’ applies because since the first sites were offered here in the late 1980s, site buyers and vendors had to sign forms agreeing that no more than 10 houses could be built here.
Part of the Clarke estate at nearby French Furze, this wooded hillside is above the Carrigaline-Crosshaven road and Owenbue estuary, near the turn-off to Fountainstown and sandy beaches.
No 8 is a superbly-built four-bed family home with brick and dash exterior, tall gables and russet-hued roof tiles, hardwood windows and 3,000 sq ft of living space, within 1.25 acres of grounds. The site includes a car-port with overhead office and a touch of the Hansel and Gretel woods about it, and a separate workshop in its lower grounds.
The site has been extensively landscaped, but even that considerable and costly input in recent years is only a scratch in the surface of the woods’ own lush maturity of a century and more of unfettered growth: 80ft tall pines, mature beech, birch, alder, ash and an array of other hardwoods compete for attention and the houses are slotted with plenty of breathing space in an appropriately naturalistic manner.
Pierce Cuthbert of PropertyChoice gives no 8 a €1.25 million guideline, and notes that choice house sites in this south county area can sell for up to and over €500,000, especially those with sea views.
There’s no sea to be seen from this site, but you can almost smell the salt-water, and the likelihood is that whoever buys here will be into boats and the countryside: in any case, there’s storage space galore here for a fleet of craft.
The vendors are in the building line, so the quality of the build is an absolute given, and the interior is done to professional interior design standards, with lots of attention to soft and hard finishes. The sale includes curtains and blinds, themselves a considerable investment in Laura Ashley fabrics.
Living space is, well, spacious, at the ground level in particular, with a pitched ceiling sunroom a real bonus to the back overlooking a broad patio and sloping, shrubbed landscaped beds. The kitchen/dining is a good 25’ by 13’ space with granite tops on country pine units, with reclaimed pitch pine beams in the ceiling and a creamy porcelain tiled floor below.
There’s also a formal dining room, a bright family room, a more formal lounge, a home study, utility and Victorian-styled guest loo with painted wood panelling. Most floors are in a pale chestnut wood for a touch of quality, and all of the main reception rooms have cast iron fireplaces - even in the kitchen/dining room.
Overhead, there are four bedrooms, all with pine floors, and the master bedroom has a walk-in-wardrobe as well as an en suite. Heating is by oil, water comes from a communal pump, and a management company has been set up to manage the roadways, lighting and other services.
