Ideal for green fingers

A country cottage near Youghal has a lovely lawn and sea views, writes Tommy Barker

HOW does your garden grow? Very professionally, as it turns out at this Knockmonlea market offering, near Youghal in east Cork

A significantly extended and modernised country cottage, it’s on 0.6 of an acre that has been tended to by green fingers.

Its owner used to run a garden centre a few miles away near Killeagh, and applied her professional expertise, and handiwork, and shovelling energy too to making most of this attractive plot near the sea, with views to Capel Island.

So, it has colourful beds, neat lawn, and productive vegetable beds, a 50’ by 18’ polytunnel, lots of sheds and log store, hen-house and chicken run, barbecue areas and south-facing patios — a real mixed package, right now at its summer best, heaving with fresh produce and gluts of garden glories.

It is a summer 2011 market offering too with agents Hegarty Properties in Midelton who say the house is every bit as good inside — and far larger than you’d expect — as the grounds are great outside.

Asking price is €330,000, which might seem hopeful enough given it is semi-detached, but they’re open to offers, and love doing viewings....book in on a sunny day, and keep an eye out for a free-range egg or two to slip in your pocket for a nest-egg.

The original cottage here was re-done not once, but twice, most recently in 2006 when it got its current decent floor plan, amount of space and best internal features. And, it’s bright inside too, add the agents.

Best room is the genteel, formal yet country-style 12’ by 16’ drawing room, with timber-beam ceiling, spalted beech floor, and rough plaster chimney breast with cast iron stove, and three large windows.

There’s also a dining room, plus a 18’ by 15’ living room, with pine floor, brick chimney breast and wood burning stove, and it’s next to an optional bedroom five, or play room, again with beamed ceilings.

There’s an inner and back hallway (with a third solid fuel stove in a brick surround — little wonder the outbuildings include a wood and turf shed!), shower room, main bathroom, and four bedrooms with one en suite.

The kitchen, again country style, has a Rangemaster dual cooker, Belfast sink, island unit in red brick with granite work tops, and this room is linked via an arch to the 14’ by 11’ dining room.

Other nice layout features include a ground floor guest bedroom. The other three are upstairs, with French doors to a south-facing patio, and a high-end main bathroom with wet-room style shower, marble floors, marble-topped dual sinks, and a free-standing claw-foot bath.

The house’s makeover included using traditional cast iron radiators (heating is dual-fuelled, oil and solid fuel stove), and the spec includes alarm, broadband, smoke detectors, rough plastered walls, solid pine doors, etc.

VERDICT: A good eye, and a bit of determination and graft, has brought Knockmonlea to the level it is now at.