Quirky house in leafy Cork suburb would suit a colourful character

IT could be in west Cork, with its mad, fuchsia-coloured walls outside.

On a sunny day, it could be some Italian hideaway. However, this house and its hidden, productive gardens is in a venerable, hilly Cork city suburb.

Number four, Lower Janemount, is a Sunday’s Well hideaway, a tree-glade above the rattle and hum of Sunday’s Well and the city, a spot found and favoured a decade or so ago by New Zealander, Bridget Healy, and chef Denis Cotter, of the Cafe Paradiso restaurant.

The house, and its verdant front and back gardens (with parking, a bonus in Sunday’s Well) have been given an inimitable twist, largely one suspects thanks to Bridget’s antipodean, full-on personality: the only blushing violets are in the garden planting and blazes of internal and external wall colour.

The standard estate agent’s advice to go for neutral colours and depersonalise hasn’t been heeded, and it is sure that whoever buys here will keep just as individual a look.

Estate agents are Savills HOK, who pin a €550,000 price tag to the 1,400 sq ft house, and who say its individuality, location, and character will match a buyer to this offering. UCC academic, perhaps? They’ve been known to colonise this setting across the river from the college campus. A four-bedroomed Victorian home, with its roots in the late 1800s, number four has been extensively customised in keeping with its original features, such as fireplaces and high beamed-ceilings, but with a funky design twist.

Cafe Paradiso aficionados will find themselves at home here, and not just because the gardens and outdoor cookery fire pit have been photographed for some of the cafe’s celebrated cookery books.

Some of the same Irish timber joinery features here, and the same chunky type of folding windows and French doors that front Cafe Paradiso have been used, so that the main living room’s front wall opens up the south-facing terrace, framed with Wisteria, while across the hall the other living room’s windows also draw back fully for bracing fresh air, or sunshine.

There’s a third reception room done as a novelty beach bar with surfing theme, and the kitchen is also to the back, with stainless steel-topped units, a highly practical work-space with good storage.

A rear annex, with back patio access, makes for a fourth/guest bedroom with en suite, and is heavily timbered, well-insulated, and with a corrugated-iron roof for that Aussie/New Zealand look.

Back here, also, there’s a laundry room and steps up to the productive herb and vegetable garden, with its raised beds, decking, cooking pit/BBQ area and more. All great charm, and good enough to eat, visually as well as literally.

Buy quickly enough and you can harvest this year’s leeks, kale, green beans, artichoke, and assorted herbs and fruits, while the inedible, but nonetheless lush, planting includes shrubs and New Zealand tree fern, Jasmine, passion fruit vine, lilac and more.

A bite-sized slice of paradise.