House of the week

The early 1990s were a busy time for the family just now setting sail from 14 The Paddocks. They were family-building and home-buying - and there was a little matter of competing in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 to contend with as well.

Now, as world-class sailor Mark Mansfield (four times Olympian in the Star class, as well as regular European champion races) and his wife Althea get set to downsize, their family home at No 14 comes up for sale, set to make its own waves in the residential property market’s upper deck.

It’s one of a dozen or so of the largest house types in The Paddocks, a Maryborough, Douglas, scheme designed by architects Roderick Hogan Associates back in 1990 and which really took Cork’s new housing stock to a higher plane. That was ever before Celtic Tiger days, and the houses here have weathered the decades since impeccably, improving year-on-year as landscaping beds them down even further on this great Maryborough Hill site overlooking Douglas and estuary, with twinkling nighttime city views beyond from high-set No 14.