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.

Bigger new-builds than The Paddocks may have come along since, in the boom years, but rarely in such a popular location, and re-sales are always strong. Prices had gone well into the €1/1.3m bracket for the better examples in the mid 2000s.

No 14 is the second Paddocks home the Mansfield family have had here. They traded up to this good stock example in the mid-1990s. It’s a five-bed detached home with 2,375 sq ft on two levels, with scope for an easy attic conversion/extension which could yield a further 800 sq ft or so, as some neighbours have done. (The houses’ tall roof pitches and lack of truss clutter makes the move pretty straightforward.)

Here, the Mansfields are moving in the opposite direction, hoping to build a smaller house from scratch, in the general vicinity. “Building a home is a dream for so many, isn’t it?” they ask, and Mark has more experience of it than most, as a mortgage/lending head with EBS in Cork City centre.

With family reared, he and Althea are about to give in to the building bug, hence the sale of No 14 via agents Malcolm Tyrrell and Brian Olden of Cohalan Downing.

They guide the well-sized family home at €725,000, and given the dearth of good-quality trading-up stock currently in the souther capital, they can expect to be fairly busy here with viewings. It’s immaculate, so any changes that new owners will want to do will be personal/decorative, maybe changing bathrooms’ tiling, or looking up to the attic for even more scope.

With a decent, square floor plan, it’s got three large reception rooms, off the wide split level hall, with bay windows in each of the two front formal ones, and the rear family room opens to a south-facing garden and deck, where there’s an attractive Acacia in a raised bed ringed with old railway sleepers and sheltered with the bonus of a detached but adjacent large garage and workroom giving extra enclosure and privacy.

There’s a utility and guest bathroom also at ground level, and overhead are five bedrooms, with an en suite master bedroom plus dressing room/walk-in closet.

No 14’s hearth is the sunny kitchen/dining-room, with timeless quality solid oak units and granite tops all done by joiner Patrick Lehane of Woodview, Coachford, with a big Stoves range for feeding a brood.

Now over 20 years old, No 14’s an example of an assured design, with mellow brick and easy-on-the-eye rough dash that just isn’t going to date.

VERDICT: Houses in The Paddocks are sellers all day long, and large house-type No 14’s on one of the best sites to boot. Something here for all ages of families.