Trendsetter on the long and winding road

HOUSES in Cork city tend to go up hill and down dale: they follow the contours of the hills cradling the inner city basin.

Houses on Nicholas Street fit the profile down to the ground, jostling shoulder to shoulder with neighbouring homes, linking Douglas Street on the lower end with Evergreen Street at the top.

It’s a steep climb, the street is narrow, and house residents are obliged to park cars outside doors and up on the footpath, putting their faith in reliable handbrakes and abandoned on short, house-width stretches of fairly level pavement adding to the higgledy-piggledy air.

It has city living convenience down to a fine art, and as a result has been colonised in the last decade by a BoHo community of owner occupiers, with some small handful of investor properties as well.

Up for sale now is 18, Nicholas Street, a house whose interior featured in these property pages back in the early 1990s when even the thought of fine interiors in modest city homes was considered novel and newsworthy.

Home to an artist for the last several years, the house has held its head up well with the many other inner city homes which have followed in its once-pioneering path.

It has lots of exposed wood and stone and brick inside: what was almost trend-setting at the time became a norm and a short-lived pub interior design mantra. What chances a new owner will paint everything cream, and go the sleek stainless steel route?

On the market with Jennifer Bermingham of Noelle Morrison Properties with a 200,000-plus price guide, (expect bidding in the plus end of the scale), it is three-bedroomed and three-storey, with two bedrooms up at sloping attic level, and a main large bedroom and bathroom at first floor level.

The ground floor has a hall, living room with cast iron fireplace and shutters, and the kitchen/dining area behind has exposed stone and brick walls, shuttered window overlooking a patio yard, and another door-sized window also making most visual connection with the yard.

To the front, the house has PVC double glazed windows, and there’s gas central heating.