King of the hill
The Cobh period house, solidly Victorian in age and character, has served its recent time as a niche guest accommodation (three-star) and acclaimed and garlanded restaurant.
It has an almost legendary wine cellar, with 200 bottles of the finest wines to choose from. Its owners Colin and Teresa Pielow's corporate hospitality business meant that key business execs sampled its expensive wares and left sated.
The enterprising couple's five years tenure at the former rectory, built in 1866 and occupied as well by the Rushbrooke family, also means that numerous wealthy and influential people have been through its doors, and will speak highly of it in the right networks as it comes up for sale.
As it hits the market with a €950,000 price tag quoted by Paul Hannon of Lisneys, he says "even though it is trading extremely well as a business, it is quite likely it may be bought and converted to back to use as a private family home."
The Pielows weren't fazed by the task of upgrading Robin Hill House when they bought it five years ago: back in 1991, they turned a 200-year-old farmhouse in Enniskerry in the Wicklow mountains into the award-winning restaurant Curtlestown House (and switched it back to private house again when they sold).
In 1995, they converted a former butcher's shop in the same village to a gourmet food and wine shop. They are leaving Cobh to return to Wicklow and a new business "for family reasons and more sociable working hours".
Robin Hill House is on private, mature and terraced gardens of half an acre (with its own mini-vineyard patch planted with chardonnay vines) with a full southerly aspect and dramatic elevated harbour views that will sell it to many viewers.
It has six individual bedrooms, all now with en suites, and each is furnished with different native hardwood by Waterford craftsman Noel Whelan.
There's plenty of living space beyond the steeply pitched entrance porch, with a large living room and the area currently hosting a 60 seat restaurant can be left as open plan living space or sub-divided.
There's a fully compliant, hard-working commercial kitchen, which can stay or go depending on a new owner's needs, and adjacent are private living quarters with external access and a sun-trap tiny courtyard, which would be ideal as an au pair's or granny's apartment.
While it has worked for its living, fed and accommodated thousands of people, it is of a size at just over 4,000 sq ft that still suits domestic private family use, with lovely gardens and an old wooden summerhouse in need of TLC.
Location is on the Lake Road, on the Cork side of Cobh near the harbour town's entrance. It is 20 miles from Cork city by road and with ferry access as another transport option to the city.
