House of the week

IT IS over 100 years since the peninsula curve and wooded hill at Currabinny was colonised with large homes for Cork’s merchant classes. Many served for years as summer and second homes, but now, the area’s very much a year-round community, at a sublime Cork harbour setting.

If you are into boats — or, just watching them go by — this is as good a berth as you could hope for

And, Currabinny’s as glorious and lusher than ever, it still has that removed air of gentility, while gardeners clearly love it as the cul de sac road in and out is verdant, colourful, tended and stocked with many tropical plants. In more ways than one it seems to have its own micro-climate.

Dotted along its approach run down from the main Coillte forest entrance are some top class contemporary homes, but the nearer you get to the pier and Currabinny’s real heart, the more Victorian and Edwardian is the architecture. It’s yet another reminder that some of Cork’s best period housing stock in is the harbour towns like Monkstown and Cobh, and smaller niches like Crosshaven and Currabinny too. The harbour rightly is Cork’s real playground, a point gently brought home last weekend with a host of waterside activities as part of Cork Harbour Open Weekend.

Utterly harbour-focused is The Terrace, Currabinny, a dead-straight line of ten upstanding and Virginia creeper draped houses, all with communal access and open front gardens — at one time the lower tier was a grass tennis court. Behind is private residents’ access to the 35ha Coillte forest with five kilometres of walks and a feature octagonal teahouse at its crown, as a reminder of gentler living days.

The Terrace’s 10 houses look out to the mouth of the Owenbue estuary to the widest part of the harbour, and immediately across the estuary is the Point Road at Crosshaven, with its tiers of few remaining tiny cottages, and clutch of Celtic Tiger contemporary lairs. In between, all day long, boats pass, from anglers and trawlers to dinghies and yachts.

As ship-shape No 2 The Terrace comes up for sale via Trish Stokes of Lisney, it’s a racing certainty that most of those viewing it will be into the sea and boats and enjoying the outdoors. If so, this three-storey, fine-order and updated 2,200 sq ft home has a trump card to woo and win them: it has full planning permission to replace an old boathouse to its stern, with a new 1,880 sq ft boathouse/garage. If you are into messing about with boats, what with this possibility, the quality of the house and its vista, and the chance to moor a boat just in that view, well, you might not be tempted to leave except to do a bit of shopping. And, you could do that by boat in Crosser.

This house was considerably upgraded in 2007, keeping the best of the old features and adding new comforts, good bathrooms, replumbing, heating, and double glazing in front.

Best addition of all is the very bright kitchen extension, under an atrium-like glazed roof with electric opening windows for ventilation, and it’s a superbly engineered space, grabbing every last bit of available light given the northern aspect.

In front are two very well-proportioned interlinked reception rooms, with sliding doors making the best use of space, and this level also has a guest WC with shower, plus utility.

The middle level has three bedrooms plus bathroom, master en suite with coved ceilings to match the house’s best rooms. The top floor is essentially self-contained, with a fourth bedroom (en suite,) and massive front room with kitchenette, and crowing glory a full-width box dormer window for the house’s very best harbour views — like a ship’s bridge, or a crow’s nest.

LOCATION: Currabinny, Cork

PRICE: €525,000

SIZE: 205 (2,200 sq ft)

BEDROOMS: 4/5

BATHROOMS: 4

BER RATING: F

BEST ASSET: Exquisite setting

VERDICT: A very good house, in a great setting.