A house you don’t want to drive past

Tommy Barker visits a property off the Cork to Midleton road that looks set to be one of the finest houses on the market this year.

YOU could be almost anywhere in the country when you pass through the gates of this home at Midleton’s Knockgriffin - and the dual carriageway right outside makes it super-accessible.

It’s not just auctioneer’s hyperbole to say it is the sort of house people will fall instantly in love with - it just seems to promise happy family days of occupation.

It has only ever had two families in its almost 60-year history and t whoever is lucky enough to buy it probably won’t be rushing out of the place either.

“I’ve met so many people who say they built parts of my house,” smiles the owner a local Midleton professional who is selling only as his four daughters are reared.

The original owners, he explains, were part of the Dwyer family dynasty of Sunbeam fame in Cork and apparently workers from the factory were regularly despatched to Knockgriffin to build and maintain the house.

Knockgriffin is a place motorists travelling along Midleton’s by-pass/Euroroute may have spotted, admired and been curious about down the years.

The good news comes in two parts, one is that it is just as good as its alluring glimpses promise and these pictures show, the second is that it can be bought: Peter Cave of Hamilton Osborne King guides it at €850,000, and can confidently expect viewers to travel to it from quite far away. Not only is it worth moving house for, it is worth changing location preferences for.

It has a full 3,000 sq ft of generously specified space, with five large bedrooms, on 1.5 acres of grounds which have evolved to bed the whole house package into its slightly elevated setting.

Garden sections include a walled part with rose beds, a remote pond and patio, a crazy paved patio on the southern sides and a sheltered terrace with access to three internal rooms.

Trees include a very attractive blue cedar, a full panoply of hardwoods, and some old fruit trees, including plum trees and the tempting old Laxton Superb variety of apples.

There’s a grand double garage (hmm, a Bentley within wouldn’t look too out of place) which links via a sheltered courtyard with fuel stores to the main residence.

Internally, the place is a delight, exceptionally well maintained and though on marginally on the dated side decoratively there a tremendous sense that the place was never mucked about and comfort levels are high.

Ceilings, too, are high and discretely coved, the hall is a welcoming room in it own right with a brick fireplace and wide staircase and bright stairwell, and reception rooms proper include drawing room, large dining room, homely study, and the large kitchen has an oil-fired Aga which heats water.

Features include a sprawling master bedroom suite, fireplaces in almost all rooms including bedrooms, a green-tiled main bathroom that’s a time-capsule of the mid-1900s, and, well, just a sense of immense integrity of design and execution.

Despite being built in the immediate post-war period in 1947, it has the settled feel of an older house, and its studied and easy-on-the-eye ‘domestic revival’ architecture (there’s touch of the Lilliput Lane ceramic cottage collectables range about its charm) certainly picks up on long-established and quintessentially English features.

According to HOK’s Peter Cave who had his first of many viewings there this week, it is “without doubt one of the finest homes to come on the market this year, Knockgriffin is an exceptional quality house set amidst rolling lawns with a mature vista of wonderful trees and specimen shrubs.”

At that, he is probably still underselling its appeal.