Ashley House sure to make waves among prospective purchasers

SOME houses are ready to move into and just ‘hang up you hat,’ as auctioneers are fond of saying. But, how about a home where you get to hang up all of your clothes, don a pair of togs, and dive right on in?

With all the rain of the past month many houses have the equivalent of a swimming pool in their back gardens. Ashley House, however, has the genuine thing.

Named after the character Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) in Gone with the Wind, it has had an enclosed swimming pool in its back garden since the 1970s when it was the height of fashion, and popular with every local child within a wide radius.

An extended semi-detached house, on the home stretch into Douglas village in Cork on the main Douglas Road, it is still a family pad par excellence, with a location in hot demand.

Up for sale for the first time in 23 years, it is only being sold as its owners are downsizing, with family reared. Along this stretch, similar and varied semis are being bought up now by new, younger generations, who are pouring money by the bucket-load into upgrades and extension.

Ashley House’s vendors have done consistent work and upgrades, with three first floor bedrooms, plus steep staircase to another attic room, suitable as a den, play area or home office. It is in spotless condition (and despite perceptions, the pool is a doddle to maintain, say the owners), but a new family of occupants are going to want to put their own mark on it all over again. That pool, for example, could be covered over as Douglas’s biggest basement wine cellar.

It is at ground floor level that this house comes into its own. It has front and back formal reception rooms, each with quality original 1930s hardwood fireplaces, and beyond the back room is a large family room or dining room. Sliding doors then lead on the pool area, enclosed and sheltered, with enough room just left over in the rear garden for a yard for sitting out and taking the sun.

The house’s ground floor also has a kitchen/dining room, and along the side of the house in a re-roofed side annexe is what is in effect a second kitchen/spacious utility room, with shower room off it.

Estate agent Johnny O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald seeks offers around €700,000 for Ashley House’s vendors, who are in the final throes of building in north Cork and who are moving back to family roots for a country lifestyle.

Ashley House will have a bit of a path beaten to its front door thanks to its urban, inside-Douglas location opposite the AIB on the Douglas Road, 250 yards from Douglas village itself. This setting puts good schools, shops, services, library, cinema, restaurants and more within a five minute walk, and with a dramatic shopping centre renewal just started work nearby.

Walking to the city centre isn’t out of the question, either.

Ashley House, with about 2,100 sq ft of space in all, has been re-roofed recently, windows were replaced, central heating was switched to gas, and a new owner can do as little, or as much, as they want, as they take a 2008 toe-dip in the market and their own private pool. What lengths will you go to?