Onwards, upwards for Kenbrevin

With five bedrooms in a bright spacious Orchard Road property, plus beautiful gardens, what’s not to like, asks Tommy Barker.

THERE’S practically nothing left of the original Orchard Road, Cork, suburban home called Kenbrevin — and, truth be told, there wasn’t much to miss.

An original mid-1900s detached family home more or less bit the demolition dust when it was bought back in the early 2000s by a family returning to Ireland, after a decade living in Edinburgh. With a young, school-going active family, a more modern, spacious and bright home was called for, and got delivered, with a good BER energy rating too, on this prime, plum, suburban site just west of UCC and the Bon Secours hospital.

How time flies: architect-designed, it was built around 2002, family life kept pace with work demands and it accommodated all tasks, and with children now adults and lining up for departures, it’s trading-down time already, and trading up or trading in time for some new occupants.

It’s all onwards and upwards for a house like this, with 2,500 sq ft to meet family needs, five bedrooms, and accommodation bright and cheerful on three levels in all. Oh, and the original house’s gardens survived very nicely, thank you, with mature screening for birds and human lounging, graced by a couple of old, slow-growing and tiny-leaved myrtle trees.

Kenbrevin’s a house of two faces, tall and a bit gaunt on the front, with two bay windows contrasting with a steeple-like glazed entrance hall, soaring perhaps 30’ to a sharp, witch’s hat apex. It makes for a stunning, full height entrance hall with above landing views out too, looking to the hills and long, institutional buildings above the Lee Fields.

Behind, it’s a different, broader faced look, with a sit-out balcony for the master bedroom’s occupants tucked into the slope of the tiled roof, sitting above the dining room extension. A second, ground level projection here at the back sees a glass-roofed end to the 20’ by 9’ family/music room.

Beginning the internal tour, proper, at the front door, there’s a pair of stained glass side panels done in the style of Glasgow designer Charles Renie Mackintosh, an immediate ‘home-making’ reminder to the departing occupants of their years earlier in Scotland.

Internally, the use of good craftmanship and natural materials continues, and clusters of glass blocks are used to keep light flowing, as well as being a feature in their own right.

The good floor plan sees a front living room (with restored, original Kenbrevin cast iron fireplace glistening once more), and a book-lined study next to one another, and the family home’s social core is the L-shaped kitchen/family/dining room, about 24’ by 24 in max measurements.

The kitchen’s spot-on, with solid oak (from Glenline) units and island topped with black granite. Off to the side of the family space (due south-facing) is the TV/music room, with gas-fired fireplace for evening cosiness.

Kenbrevin’s first floor hosts a great master suite, in two sections, with balcony, dressing room, and en suite shower room with double shower, and underfloor heat pad.

There are two more bedrooms to the front, one with bay window, as well as the family bathroom up here, as is the fit-for-purpose utility/laundry room; having it among the bedrooms means less lugging down stairs of bed linen and laundry - great if you’re not too hung up on garden clothes lines, so to speak.

A proper stairs then leads on to the uppermost level, with two well-sized bedrooms (all five bedrooms are doubles) and there’s a shower room up top to serve these rooms, perfect for older offspring, reclusive teenagers, or dens and games rooms.

Detailing is quite precise, and proper, so all doors are fire-rated as is required for three-storey dwellings, and circulation areas like the landings have good storage and shelving — this home has dozens of metres of bookshelves. Moving out will be like the closure of a Carnegie Library.

Selling agents for Kenbrevin are Sheila O’Flynn and Johnny O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald, jointly with Sam Kingston of Casey and Kingston, and they seek offers around €720,000, knowing there’ll be good demand.

Just about every house that’s come up here for sale in the past decade or two on Orcahrd Road has been a do-er upper, and there’s some pretty fine new builds and upgrades, with medics very much to the fore given access to CUH, UCC and the Bons.

The house is a walk-in job, as is the city centre about a mile away; there are amenities such as Fitzgerald’s Park, the Mardyke Arena and Lee Fields all nearby — which is just as well, as Kenbrevin’s exterior (self-coloured render and brick) and gardens are so easily kept and so low-maintenace there’s no ’grunt’ to be had in the grounds.

VERDICT: Prepare for a bidding battle to buy.