Squirrel away in a home in the woods

THE neighbourhood woodland squirrel was one of the impromptu attractions when a house at Kilcoolishal, Glanmire, almost doubled its guide price last year.

The attractive period bungalow on wooded grounds of 1.3 acres called Wilderness caused a sales stir when it jumped from its €550,000 price guide to sell for a whopping €900,000.

Helping create the sales mystique of a rural idyll was an obliging red squirrel who brazenly disported himself in the gardens when viewers came to call.

Now selling agents Hamilton Osborne King may need the furry friend to come out of his winter slumber because a neighbouring house is on sale.

This time around, the property is on smaller but no less attractive grounds, and is a modern two-storey dwelling.

But the main characteristic Eastwood shares with Wilderness is the €550,000 starting price guide. However, the extraordinary bidding that characterised the last sale (billed in these pages with some portent as ‘What price Wilderness?’) is unlikely to be repeated.

Eastwood is a four-bed detached and two-storey house of around 1,900 sq ft, and include a good-sized sitting room, dining room and family room, kitchen with garage access, four double-sized bedrooms with built-ins, bathroom and separate shower room.

There is a double garage, a utility room with a serviceable Belfast sink, a tarmac drive with parking. The gardens are wooded to the rear. The rest are planted with a variety of arbutus, apple, azalea, camellia, willow, pieris etc, with stone wall boundaries to the south.

Jarlath Boyd of Hamilton Osborne King expects good trading-up interest from Cork city and surrounds for the house at easy to access Kilcoolishal, just a few minutes’ drive from the Jack Lynch tunnel. But he has the squirrel on stand-by just in case.