Build a future with vintage brick

BEAUTIFUL in brick, 1 Brookfield Villas has mellowed gently over the past 100 years.

Brick is one of those building materials that improve with the years, and the detailing yellow and red hues used here have grown to complement one another in this three-storey home on Cork's College Road.

No 1 is the latest of a handful of similar vintage houses to come up for sale here in the past year, and is opposite the Bon Secours hospital, with UCC's campus all around.

The new medical and nursing school, built around the original Brookfield House, is yet another fine architectural addition to the college campus.

Most of the last few sales have been to private buyers (one or two stayed as medical consulting rooms) and there's quite a robust demand in the €500,000-plus bracket.

No 1 carries a guide of €650,000, and agent Jarlath Boyd of Hamilton Osborne King expects residential demand at this level.

Owner-occupied for the last 30 years, it has five bedrooms, and up to 2,000 sq ft of space, and adding to its family residential appeal is the off-street parking, side garage and rear garden access - and a southerly aspect to that garden.

A semi-detached home, it has two ground level reception rooms, with a bay window in the front 15' by 12' sitting room. There's a dining room behind, with a kitchen further to the back at the hall's end, and the bathroom is on the stairs return.

The house has retained much of its period architectural detailing and "hasn't been got at", says Mr Boyd, and all five bedrooms have their cast iron fireplaces in situ as focal points (central heating still has to be installed).

Windows are sash, roof is slate, with an attractive slate-roofed porch, and the front boundary wall has decorative wrought iron rails.

The rear garden is mature, with old stone walls, and is nicely planted up, and the rear access gives further scope for storage/parking/extension.