Simply the best... if you’ve cash to spare

Tommy Barker is smitten by the charms of this period property.

A CLINTON catch-phrase was “it’s the economy, stupid.”

In Sunday’s Well in Cork, home to the old money set, the equivalent line is “it’s the setting, boy.”

Location: half a mile upriver from the city: check. Aspect: full southerly, check. Views: check, Glorious grounds and privacy, check. Affordable? Cheque, thank you, or bank draft, or vulgar cash to the tune of €1.2 million-plus, if you want to pick up the large three-storey semi-d called Hazelhurst.

There’s hardly an urban residential location in the country to match this strip of prime real estate, thanks to the sublime setting on a edge of a virtual cliff, with terraced grounds zig-zagging precariously down to a flat stretch which leads to the water’s edge.

Look up from the lower grounds, and with a bit of imagination (or a lot of vino bianco) you could be gazing at some Tuscan landscape and hillside hideaways.

Across the Lee is Fitzgerald Park, and the view from Hazelhurst’s full height is full-on through a sea of green to the UCC main campus and Quadrangle, its new buildings and Glucksmans art gallery, with St Fin Barre’s spires to the east and County Hall to the west.

The lower grounds of the handful of better properties here are large enough to hold tennis courts. Some houses have small outdoor swimming pools on their terraces and house owners down the years have been know to have punts and canoes (jet-skis are so New Money) tethered at their river boundaries. They even come in handy because the lower gardens sometimes flood in winter when the dam upriver at Inniscarra discharges huge water volumes.) There’s even salmon fishing from the banks, ye gods.

Woodwards auctioneers have Hazelhurst up for sale by private treaty, and even though this autumn has a number of ce1 million homes up for sale (Court Cairn, Annaville on the Western Road, one coming on in the Blackrock Castle vicinity, another to hit the market in Monkstown, etc) it surely will be a trophy buy for its new owners.

‘Four-bed semi’ is too cheeky a description for this old dame, about to change hands for the first time since 1972.

It won’t be cheap, and it needs work, but it offers an unparalleled ease and quality of lifestyle for a family which needs access to the city, university, schools and more, all wrapped up in a package with immense gardens/grounds, play space and it has off-street parking galore.

Buffered from the busy road by its garage and drive, the house needs a makeover as the layout of rooms is a bit off-kilter.

The smartest bedroom is currently the one down in the lower ground floor, none of the top floors three bedrooms is suitably imposing, and the only bathroom upstairs here is a squeeze - it wouldn’t be out of place in a bedsit.

The largest bathroom is, peculiarly, off the mid-level kitchen, and there’s no real entrance hall to speak of: there’s a side porch annexe leading into the kitchen, or the alternative is to go down steps to the front patio and come in through the sunroom.

The best room for those who want period room proportions for entertaining is the 22’ by 15’ drawing room, with high ceilings, some decorative plasterwork, and French doors to a large balcony with seating on top of the sun-room beneath. Other rooms include a family room/study, good deep ground level living room with fireplace (tiled), lounge, second bathroom, and there’s access to a yard between the house and road-side garage, with vaulted stores.

Aspiring owners will have to see the potential to be had by changing rooms around (the kitchen will probably be moved downstairs,).

The house has loads of charm. Location is still second to none. Further investment will be money well-spent: the trend is that owners stay in occupation for decades.