Ravin’ over Ravensdale and its chocolate box charm

IT’S hard to sum up the attractiveness of Ravensdale, it’s just that when you see it, you go, Aaaah. There’s a kind of chocolate box charm about this Douglas village house, even though it’s obvious it needs work.

Maybe it’s the setting: tucked away in a leafy cul-de-sac under the old Carrigaline road in Cork, in the heart of the old village. Surrounded by a handful of houses (of differing periods), there’s a stream running by the boundary and a small entrance road leads inwards from Church Road.

Ravensdale is one half of what was a single, larger building which, according to locals, was a nursing home attached to the local Church of Ireland parish.