Sheer extravagance
Welcome to Gortalough, Mark 2, a home with 10,500 sq ft of space the size of 10 townhouses but which has a private, intimate feel and a world-class interior specification.
Style is vaguely American, as in Beverly Hills or the Hamptons, but the location is Cork's best equivalent, the Rochestown Road.
It is set in mature and secure suburban Irish grounds of 1.5 acres with orchard, lawns and a host of mature 100-year-old trees, including a specimen cedar.
It is a couple of hundred yards from the Fingerpost in Douglas, with buses running past the gates.
Two shopping centres, two major hotels, schools, library and walks are all right on the doorstep.
You don't need a car to live here, but if you have one (or a fleet) there's 4,000 sq ft of paved front drive, a double garage (with overhead living space) and a gently curving graveled drive from the electric front gates through the grounds to the low-key main entrance.
The front door is just one of many openings here at a house made for hospitality: this pad has 50 internal doors, all in oak, while many of the Marvin windows are in fact double doors: tallying them all up individually, there are 49 external doors, and 206 windows.
Gortalough is one of 10 or so spectacular private homes on large grounds which have given this road its social cachet.
"You have a one in 10 chance of getting a home here on this section of the road, but realistically most of them never come up for sale," says estate agent Margaret Kelleher of Lisney, charged with the high profile sale.
While it may attract an out of towner, it is a prize many local buyers will want, ready to move into, everything thought of. Some probable buyers may not have realised, until now, how unsatisfactory their own homes are!
Gortalough was probably the last house on this millionaire's row to come up for sale in 1999/2000, and sold without going on the open market.
One other house also changed hands in the last few years, in a private deal, while one or two owners have built second houses on their properties.
Largest of the lot, this two- storey residence is split into two defined areas by a central hallway: one is the formal section, the other the more fun area.
The central hallway, running the depth of the house with rear garden views from the front door, has a stairwell in English oak with masterful joinery work, warm pink and cream-hued Tuscan sandstone walls, and limestone and oak floor.
Gortalough was built in the 1920s, and extended willy-nilly down the years. The purchasers engaged a London firm of architects Yurky Cross, headed by Sligo man John Yurky, to redesign their home.
It was a process that saw almost total demolition, extension and rebuilding, capped off with interior materials such as Irish oak, English oak, beech, ash and pine, Tuscan honed sandstone, French marble, Irish limestone cills and French and English stone fireplaces.
Although some aspects need final finishing off, it is already a house almost without equal in Cork, in terms of quality spread over so much space.
It has a leisure area with indoor swimming pool plus dehumidifier, steam room, indoor and outdoor hot tubs, games room/home cinema, a capacious master suite the width of the house, with double aspect, dressing room, bathroom with jacuzzi bath, morning/reading room, and four other bedrooms all en suite.
The plumbing mix sees seven showers and five baths...and then there are the hot tubs and pool to play soak in too.
Other principal rooms include octagonal drawing room, library corridor, study/office, family room, dining room, kitchen with sun room dining space, plus utilities, wine store etc.
Specification is unstinting: underfloor heating at ground level, digital internal phones, wiring for ISDN and digital sound, built in vacuum system, security gates and the house is alarmed with motion detectors that are pet friendly.
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