House of the week

A decade or so after some masterful conservation, the three terraced houses in Cork’s Bellevue Villas (where No 2’s a market relaunch) are among the city’s best examples of manageable, period home grandeur.

It’s a niche enclave of three immaculate period Georgian gems, plus converted coachhouse, within a flat walk of Cork city centre on the Lower Glanmire Road, reached via a brand new bridge over the Cork-Midleton rail line: the bridge was built by CIE at a reputed €15m cost, to service a handful of houses and replacing (on safety grounds) a private level crossing.

The terrace backs up against a tall sandstone cliff below Lover’s Walk, creating a virtual microclimate, with some lovely mature communal grounds, reserved parking, and a retained wrought iron pedestrian bridge over the rail tracks.

The painstaking work done to all three Bellevue Villas houses, facing south overlooking the Marina and River Lee has been well-chronicled in these pages down the years, as has the occasional market outing they’ve had.

The last resale was No 3, over a year ago, making a c€800,000 sum, having been put on the market several years beforehand with a high, €1.7/2m aspiration.

Now, No 2, which also has had a long period on the market (it launched in ‘ 08, guiding €1.65m), has had a change of agents, and a precipitous price reduction to €525,000, with Michael O’Donovan of Sherry FitzGerald, the firm that also sold No 3 back in 2009.

No 2’s no longer furnished, as the vendors moved out some time ago and it has been rented for some of the interim, but it still shows well. Purists who want architectural detailing and originality will find much to admire here, on all of its five levels, three main floor plus attic, over a self-contained basement with both internal and independent access.

No 2 has great integrity, gracious rooms, high ceilings, immaculate ornate plasterwork, is straight and true, and with central heating supplied via age-appropriate cast iron radiators.

Best room is the first floor drawing room, 28’ by 16’, with three south-facing tall windows overlooking the river, and the Cork-Cobh/Midleton rail line. The ground floor, meanwhile, has two interconnecting reception rooms, with a kitchenette behind: the larger kitchen is in the basement.

A new owner might want to extend the kitchenette back into the rear drawing/dining room, but other than that there’s little to change, bar a bit of freshening up: it was last decorated using top brands such as Mulberry, Zoffany, Osbourne and Little, Colefax and Fowler, and Farrow and Ball paints.

There’s scope for up to six bedrooms, three of them at first and second floor levels, and there are three attic rooms, and a basement bedroom as well, so it’s a little unconventional, yet adaptable.

Two of the bedrooms have en suite bathrooms, but they’ll have to be shared with the other bedrooms, as despite there being four WCs in all, there’s no stand-alone family bathroom in the current configuration.

VERDICT: Bellevue Villas’ setting is a little bit special, removed from the throng yet its costly new bridge access opens it up a whole lot more for its owners. It has a great aspect — and there’s a lot of great house here for the right buyer.