River view house basks in light

Tommy Barker says this new hillside property is a slice of old Cork

YOU get much of your heat for free at this top-spec Hollymount house. Thanks to its glazing, its direct south facing aspect and extremely high insulation levels, it is close to being a passive home in terms of its future energy consumption.

That’s the quiet boast of the people who built it, keenly keeping an eye on future energy costs and consumption while not sparing a cent on the capital outlay.

Very much a personal vision, they brought in architects Barnes Murray De Bhaill to fashion a contemporary house for a quiet spectacular site, elevated above the Lee a couple of miles upriver from Cork city. Having realised the vision though, a job move away from Cork means a sale, and they finished the house to the same level they would have wanted for themselves, resisting the temptation to cut corners at the last minute.

It comes up for sale with Dan Howard, of Dooley and Howard auctioneers, who reckons it is one of the best modern homes he has come across in Cork and will suit buyers locally who’ll prize the location as much as the property, and relocaters who will be blown away by this offering so close to the city.

He guides it at €1.6 million, and says it would have made €2m a year or two ago.

Designed for the site’s slope and aspect, as well as the views, it is a rectangle with a slate mono-pitch roof. The main living rooms are on the top floor, all opening to a broad balcony or terrace, with the four bedrooms downstairs. Bar the slight inconvenience of carrying the shopping upstairs to the kitchen, it all works a dream.

There’s about 3,600 sq ft of living space here in all, with three of the bedrooms en suite and most of those, plus all the living spaces overhead, positioned to the front of the house for light and that upper-deck vista. The master bedroom has a wet-room style en suite with a big dressing room beyond it. The back of the house is more or less given to service and secondary rooms and, as an energy saving measure, has just a handful of small windows on the north-facing aspects.

Built on a 0.4-acre site, the greenery is kept to the upper garden levels to the rear, easily accessed as steps have been hewn out and the back boundary is an old estate stone wall. This is a slice of old Cork: the neighbouring large period house once belonged to a city sherrif, and Hollymount is the site of a couple of dozen homes, from bungalows to more extravagant affairs, all resplendent in the sun-basking hillside two minutes from Victoria Cross.

The external landscaping here is expensively done and recent planting will explode into life in a few short years. The hard landscaping includes Chinese bush hammered granite, cut limestone and Indian sandstone, while walls are in a monocouche spray render and so should never need painting, only the odd power-wash.

The main view has a venerable monkey puzzle tree as a thorny marker, with views beyond of pure greenery, the Lee and bordering fields along the Carrigrohane Straight Road. A fountain to the side of the house is about the only feature not from the contemporary design palette, while wiring and ducting has been put in place for solar panels and the house itself has oil-fired central heating, zoned with dramatic tall radiators as a space-saving and visual feature. There’s also a dramatic, wall-set solid fuel stove in the high-ceilinged living room on the eastern gable.

Internal joinery is done to a high level, with rounded walnut sections used for as architraving, very five-star hotel in looks.

The kitchen/dining room at the house’s other end has similar max height 14' ceilings, a fully fitted kitchen in white gloss with granite and timber trim and tops. Flooring across this whole level is pale polished Italian stone.

All fixtures, sockets and lights are good quality, with lots of downlighters, and the decor just needs an injection of colour in a personal choice of furnishing to bring the whole place singing into life.

The house’s lower level is deeper than up top, where some of the depth is given over to the “room outdoors”, that balcony with glazed balusters and stainless steel rails. Sliding patio doors link it up to the kitchen/dining, to the large and bright first floor landing/seating area, and to the laid-back lounge area, with steps up to a rear home office or den/entertainment room tucked under the roof’s height.

This River Lee house is ready to move into and sprawl out around.

Better than a blank canvas, it just needs a furnishing flourish. Buy, and shop.