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Carrying the largest price tag ever attached to a Cork city home through estate agent Margaret Kelleher of Lisney, and with a considerable 10,500 sq ft of space including swimming pool and leisure centre, this Rochestown Road home is simply on a par with the best houses anywhere in the country.
A similar sized 10,000 sq ft, three-storey Victorian home Kenah Hall in Killiney, Dublin is broadly comparable but carries a 8 to 10 million price with Sherry FitzGerald
Even at four times the price of Gortalough, it is almost incidental that its asking price has been reduced from an even higher expectation last year of around 12 million.
After several years of millions made, banked and invested during the Celtic Tiger's prowl, there might be one or two more Cork homes built quietly to this sort of scale or specification: one has recently been completed in rural Upton, with wildly varying estimates of the millions pumped into it by its lawyer/developer owner.
And, across Cork city, on the other side of the Lee, another stunning city home on spectacular riverside grounds is quietly being touted for sale for over 2 million.
The grounds of Maryborough House Hotel and Douglas House, near Rochestown/Douglas's Gortalough, but on Maryborough Hill, have thrown up a half dozen new homes, under and over the 1 million barriers with one in particular likely to be up to 8,000 sq ft.
But, despite these domestic displays of wealth, Gortalough is the one that is out there in the marketplace, and its location is prime suburbia. It is on the Rochestown Road, one of that elite clutch of large homes at the Douglas end on great grounds, with utmost privacy behind high stone walls.
Gortalough was last sold on 2.5 acres of grounds just over three years ago, for then record sum of £1 million: the first to break that magic figure barrier. It now bears little resemblance to its original state after a two-year building programme.
Since that sale, one house, Clanrickarde on the Blackrock Road, was sold for £3 million for then-owner Clayton Love Jnr.
It was sold on three acres and billed as being on prime development land, but its buyers with UK/Cork connections have kept it, thus far, as a private family home and have lavished even more cash on it.
That's all the context, and Margaret Kelleher of Lisney says this sale is a sort of "one-in-10" chance to buy into this part of the Rochestown Road location, given the small number of homes on this stretch that have given the road its cachet
Few of the original features of the old house remain, but this modern home with a sleek US look to its exterior, has retained some of the footprint, some window openings, and the front door.
Just about everything else in new, and superbly conceived and delivered, with a small handful of items to be finished out after a two-year rebuilding project.
The entrance hall, with a galleried oak landing and Tuscan sandstone walls, wouldn't be out of place as the foyer of a five star or boutique hotel, and materials used inside include lots of oak, beech, French limestone, and appliances are German.
On the macro scale, the various functions of the house are laid out formal vs family/functional on either side of the eye- catching hall central axis, with swimming pool, leisure centre/home cinema on one side (among other assorted rooms).
Design on the micro scale includes details like limestone around the doors and sills, red clay roof tiles which will mellow the house in a few short years, and Marvin windows all round; 206 of them.
The house has 50 internal oak doors (the handles could be better chosen, nit-pick, nit-pick) and as many again to the outside, if you round up all the double doors around the property.
Very much designed as a family residence, it has five bedrooms, all naturally en suite, and the main bedroom has a dressing room, morning room, lobby and a bathroom with a Jacuzzi bath with a computer that talks you through the programmes. It does everything bar tell you that you are still dirty behind the ears.
That master suite is over on the entertainment sid of the house, where the indoor pool (which needs to be finished off, ie tiled and detailed) is located. Here are two hot tubs, a steam room, home bar and an upper floor to hold a home cinema, games/billiards and more.
Reception rooms include an octagonal drawingroom, with recessed ceilings, study and corridor library to the front of the house, while behind facing south are the dining room, family room with Le Droff fireplace, and the kitchen with a black Aga range, and a wood-ceilinged sun room as a bright informal eating spot. Three balconies add to the private garden views.
Specification detailed by the vendors and the architects Yurky Cross of the UK is bang up to date, with underfloor zoned heating, ISDN lines, digital sound wired to a number of rooms, digital internal phone system, built-in central vacuum system, garbage disposal and electric gates wired for CCTV.
Materials were sourced far and wide, from Ireland to the UK, Continent and US, and the level of finish is very high, particularly so in the entrance hall with its English oak stairs and sandstone walls.
Rural in aspect but suburban in location, Gortalough comes with orchards, mature grounds, and privacy all on the edge of Douglas village, with all services a few minutes' walk away.
The prized property is being sold by Lisney on an acre and a half, with good gardens which despite their size won't need a huge level of upkeep. The vendor is keen to retain a separate acre of the original 2.5 acre property at the rear, which has access to Maryborough Hill.
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