Gardens make it in top-notch location
That’s what the owners of Lindisfarne did 30 years ago, when they built this big, family home, after moving close to Cork city from a country site with expansive, rural views. They built around a feature courtyard, and now all the key rooms of this great family home look into its timeless landscaped space.
Set off the city end of the Model Farm Road, on a private site of two-thirds of an acre, Lindisfarne (presumably named after the north of England holy island) is a new market arrival. It comes up for sale, for the first time, just as its gardens come back into their budding and fragrant own, despite one of the coldest, most punishing winters in memory.
No one person — except, perhaps, one of the owners — can get full credit for just how much this property mix is defined and made by its gardens.
Noted horticultural names, like Brian Cross, Dominick Cullinan and Nangles Nurseries, all had inputs, guided by the woman of the house, who has tilted the soil’s natural, neutral balance with special feeds to favour her camellias, azaleas and the like.
The location is in the niche greenery of Robinscourt, where a handful of detached homes were built over the years in the grounds of an older dwelling, each with a huge measure of privacy.
From Lidisfarne, you can’t see another home — not a bad boast for a place a couple of hundred yards from Dennehy’s Cross church.
“It has been years, over a decade at least, since a detached house on its own grounds, between the Rendevous and Dennehy’s Cross, came up for sale,” says auctioneer, Dennis Guerin, of Frank V Murphy & Co, quietly confident of a good sale here, given the quality of the offering.
He had a €1.4m sale further out the Model Farm Road, last year, as well as a couple of c€1m-plus sales in Douglas, and has another big Cork house under advanced offer: “There’s discernible activity at the upper end of the market for good houses,” he says.
Five-bedromed Lindisfarne is one of the very best packages around any side of town, for quite a while.
It has 3,800 sq ft of space, which includes an attached/integral double garage that is immediately convertible — if a new owner can think of any room that needs to be added on to the good mix here.
Essentially, all of the living space is in the broad, U-shaped residence, with the fourth side of the square taken up by an entrance-marking gazebo, with railings screening and supporting the first banks of courtyard planting, two linked feature ponds, and hard landscaping.
Described by Mr Guerin as “a great house for parties,” the main and formal entrance is off on the very right hand side, with guests passing by a cloakroom into a spacious, vaulted-ceilinged 25’ by 15’ drawing room, with double aspect/big bay window, and has a feature brass-and-smoked, glass, tall fireplace, with travertine hearth seating.
Three steps lead on to a dining room, screened from the kitchen by a pantry. This quite formal side of the house can be reassigned to more low-key family duties at the drop of, well, a napkin.
The kitchen is the heart of Lindisfarne, absolutely mid-ships overlooking the courtyard, with white-gloss Siematic units (presciently ahead of their time when first put in decades ago, they have aged extremely well — as has the Amtico flooring). Layout is completely practical, as good for cooking for a couple as for a dozen.
All bar one of the five bedrooms are upstairs, and that ground-floor room is next to a guest bathroom, with connecting door to serve as an en-suite, if needed.
Also at ground level is a 16’ by 15’ family room, again with a high-vaulted ceiling and feature fireplace, and this leads next to a back hall (passing through some select rooms like this cuts down wasteful corridor space) to a home office, a cool wine cellar, and next to the well-built double garage with its electric doors.
A visual feature of this house is the winding, hand-made, hardwood staircase with brass rails, by the tall windows, giving a sort of nautical feel as you head up to the sleeping quarters.
Up here, each of the four bedrooms is individual, none more so than the huge master suite, with its niche recess window, Juliet balcony overlooking the courtyard, dressing room and four-piece en-suite beyond.
The three other bedrooms are all doubles and overlook the central courtyard from on high, with the main bathroom at the opposite wing from the master suite.
The vendors have Lindisfarne looking its best, just as they prepare to move, to build anew as their children have grown up and moved out. Showing some steely determination, they built this place 30 years ago, by direct labour and with a number of design quirks to challenge even a main contractor’s patience. With its warm, Butterly brick, small French roof tiles (sourced from Northern Ireland, back then) and handsomely matured gardens, Lindisfarne is a mellow, Model Farm Road package to which to aspire.
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