Secret gardens a bonus with Peacehaven purchase

KEEPING up with the neighbours can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, particularly when the house next door has a historic tower monument grafted on to it.

Peacehaven, on Tower Hill in Glounthane, just east of Cork city, has a sentinel marker next door, a tall tower (see background of photo) seen from miles around, built as a tribute to the 19th century Apostle of Temperance, Fr Theobald Mathew. The tower is privately owned, and has a large house built onto and integrated into it.

Right alongside on heavily wooded Tower Hill is the attractively-titled Peacehaven, a detached dormer home of 3,500 sq ft, on a site of an acre, with two ‘secret’ gardens fully enclosed with laurel hedging.

Truly, a lot of property in one package, and given the amount of space in the raised gardens behind where the best views are, and the site plateaus to a flat space of about a quarter of an acre, there may be scope at some future time for a site here. The back of Peacehaven’s grounds is fringed by very mature hardwoods, mostly beech, at least a century old. If a possibly extra site isn’t to your needs (planning would determine much of the scope here) or current requirements, then it is a great spot for a summer house or a hot tub and decking, with views stretching over Cork harbour, up and down the river, from Fota back towards the city.

The five-bedroomed house, pitched towards the upper end of the price scale in the Glanmire/Glounthaune hinterland, is new to the market with Michael O’Donovan of Sherry FitzGerald, who guides it at €1.4 million for its owners, a couple preparing to trade down after years in the building and bar business.

Dating to the mid-1990s, it is immensely sturdily built, and there’s the strong feeling the man behind it didn’t cut corners.

Even the large detached garaged is supplied with services that would make converting to other uses an easy job.

Essentially a dormer house, it stretches enough so that there’s good head height in almost all of the upper floor rooms, so no dead space under sloping roofs here, and there’s great and easily accessed eaves storage too.

The centrepiece is a double height hall, with feature stairwell and galleried landing, and well-finished teak is used as the joinery choice.

At ground level, the house fits in three reception rooms, with a very well-sized drawing room with dual aspect, there’s also a family room and dining room, along with a big kitchen/dining room, with utility rooms off.

The ground level also has one big en suite bedroom, and up overhead are four more bedrooms, one en suite, one with an adjoining shower room, plus a main family bathroom.

It shows well, the decor is possibly a bit dated but easily altered, and finishes are good.

It has double glazing, oil heating, great grounds, privacy in a hillside setting shared with equally large homes on big sites (a sites on the southern-aspected hill here is seeking €700,000), and despite the size of Peacehaven’s package, maintenance requirements are modest.