HOUSE OF THE WEEK
Might lightening, with luck, strike twice? If so, the pick-of-the-bunch home, Orchard House, in the grounds of Cork’s Maryborough House Hotel, could be the lucky recipient. It hit the sales jackpot last time around.
This one-off, reproduction, Victorian-styled home has featured before, and fairly extensively, on these pages, and last changed hands in 2010, when it was bought by a woman based in China and with European work connections.
We reported the sale at close to €1.6m, which made it one of that year’s sales highlights. Now that the Property Price Register is up and running, it shows the sale of Orchard House, aka No 3 Maryborough Orchard, at €1.525m, to which must be added the sums paid for the furniture: it was bought lock, stock and barrel by that overseas buyer.
When she bought the 5,000 sq ft, mint-order, Orchard House, it had been 20 months on the market, reduced from €2m in 2008 to €1.5m. A ‘sale agreed’ at that sum had fallen through on the vendors, who’d put heart, soul and lots of cash into the property — and the miracle was that a second, successful buyer was lined up and signed up within 48-hours of that deal collapsing.
Now, the selling agent, once more, is Dennis Guerin of Frank V Murphy & Co, who sold the 15 sites in the orchard grounds of what’s now a city suburban hotel with retained period house.
The overseas vendor has high hopes, or a studied indifference to this country’s economic woes; the guide is €1.55m, even though the market’s down about 25%i n the interim.
So, Mr Guerin’s just started viewings with a sense of deja vu, and deja valuations too, and he diplomatically says he’s open to offers once viewers have had the chance to test the quality of the product.
It has barely been lived in since its previous owners moved out, and — bar the removal of personal effects and possessions — it can be said, and be seen, to be the exact same property as before.
Only now, the gardens are more mature, (it was built and landscaped in 2005), the ivy’s further up the front wall, softening and mellowing its smooth plaster newness. Even after the last month of near drought, it’s so pristine and greened in front, on densely planted grounds, that it looks like a computer-generated image, almost too good to be real.
There isn’t a small or under spec-ed house on any of these orchard sites, and Orchard House is among the largest, and on one of the better (and sunnier) sites, away from mature woodland trees fringing Maryborough Hill.
All of the neighbouring house owners had boom-time budgets to buy sites, to build and to landscape, so now the enclave has gotten greener and lusher. It’s also had the unexpected effect of making the sites (which were never big) look larger and more private, as individual houses retreat behind the march of nature and growth of trees and bamboo. Incidentally, the enclave is walled and gated, and several houses already safely ensconced behind the communal electric gates have a second level of gated control.
One a quarter-acre site, with green area in front for added privacy and set-back, the plum-order Orchard House is a five/six-bed three-storey home done to a high build and finish standard, to a Victorian-build template. Since Cork’s Lindville scheme set a marker for this retro look, there have been many Cork and Munster imitators, and as many get the proportions right as they do wrong. This one, however, is bigger, bang on balance, and probably better than its other Cork rivals; Dennis Guerin says it’s the best-finished he’s seen in a quarter century of selling in the city.
The tenor and tone is set from first touches and glimpses, from the entry porch, with its Gothic, arched windows and hardwood dentils, right up to the attic rooms high above, and the standard doesn’t drop in between.
Even internal walls are thick, likely to be block-on-flat, which is shown in the wide doorcases, and floors on all three levels are concrete slabs (with underfloor heating on the lower two levels), making it pretty bombproof and set to last.
The house’s full, three-storey height can be discerned from the stairwell, dizzying to look down from the top level, and up here are a fifth bedroom, shower room, and games room, with eaves storage.
The four mid-level bedrooms are all doubles, and all en suite. The wallpapered master bedroom is 20’ by 16’, with dressing room, and beyond is the penthouse suite-sized bathroom, with walls and floor all in marble, along with a Jacuzzi bath sunk into a raised plinth. There’s also a separate power shower.
Two of the other bedrooms have retained their previous occupants’ identities, with a Ralph Lauren-themed boys’ room and a Pink Princess girl’s room.
Back down at entry level, the hall’s split level with large, white, marble floor tiles with contrasting black tile inserts at each tile’s corners, and the rear sun room and utility have similar quality floors.
There’s an office and playroom, with guest WC, to the right, a walnut-floored 27’ by 15’ lounge to the left with open, marble fireplace with polished brass insert. The ultimate family space is the linked kitchen/dining and stepped-down living room across most of the back of this spread-out house.
Kitchen units are solid-timber, hand-painted in Farrow and Ball hues, and this F&B brand is used extensively in other rooms, too, as are decor brands such as Laura Ashley, Nina Campbell, James Hare and Colfax and Fowler.
Several kitchen units are free-standing, and beech and/or granite topped, with big island, hanging pot stand and appliances are top brands, with a six-burner Fisher and Paykel range, holding a wok burner, two ovens and BBQ grill.
Douglas, Cork
€1.55m
Sq m 465 (5,000 sq ft)
5
6
B3
Sheer quality
Feel you missed out last time? Well, Orchard House is back on the block.
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