House of the week
It last changed hands in the 1970s, when it was 100 years old, and had seen a few broods reared. Vendors back then were the Walsh family, one of whom was Edward, later Dr Ed Walsh, founding president of University of Limerick.
This fine, Shankiel home has an acre of gardens that includes a level section that was a lawn tennis court, a charming sheltered walled orchard, and outbuildings for children to explore and run riot around.
Landscape House comes up for sale this week with agent, Timothy Sullivan, for its private family of owners, who’ve made their own improvements, inside and out down the years, and who kept the grounds to a very high degree, overall.
So, now, there’s a wonderful, walled orchard, with apple and pears, to the east or city side of the house, a graveled front drive and stone-wall fringed avenue, sloping lawn, with year-round tree colour and screening, former tennis court to the west, courtyard buildings, plus old coach-house section/store with a real old-world feel, plus at its core, a 2,700 sq ft house, able and willing to accommodate the liveliest of young families, in a settled city suburb, popular with medics.
Location is high above Sunday’s Well, yet a walk back to the city centre and to UCC, a sort of downhill roll that puts momentum in your stride.
Landscape House’s entrance is mid-way along its long, long southern hill boundary, and the private house has a great setting, on its acre, with views back down to UCC and towards the city.
One rear bedroom has long valley views to the east, down to the harbour, so keep a telescope handy.
There’s a short few limestone steps to this home’s front door, with feature stained glass panels all in situ here and even more imposingly so in the stairs’ return, both able to turn shafts of light into glories of colour, either end of the long, tall central hall.
Left and right are high-ceilinged reception rooms, one a drawing room all in pink and with plasterwork done 25 year ago by the Neff brothers, plus a quality, white marble fireplace, while the other’s a formal dining room.
Both front rooms have square, south-facing windows redone in pvc and parquet flooring.
This house’s real age is most obvious in the service rooms, in the core, and behind in a long, two-storey annex (which partly colonised an old, lofted coach-house), by a hospitable kitchen/breakfast room, with double aspect, and a raised family room with gas-insert fireplace.
This room is an early forerunner of the open-plan family living/eating space that’s currently in vogue.
Nearly all of this family home’s rooms are large, and, upstairs, there are large bedrooms at each front corner.
One of these bedrooms is en-suite with a wet-room shower arrangement, and across the landing is another, fine-sized bedroom with dressing-room area behind. The fourth bedroom is to the back, above the kitchen, very separate and so ideal for older offspring, and it has an en-suite bathroom with shower, and almost a hidden door to an ancient-feeling, lofted store room, easily made into a games/billiard room, with external gable-end access.
There’s a cluster of dry outbuildings around a courtyard, with a tall, west-facing wall ready-made for a lean-to sun room/orangery — think of it as a quality farmhouse, in the city.
Shanakiel, Cork City
€650,000
Sq m 252 (2,775 sq ft)
4
5
3
Heavenly elevated acre
The house is easily updated, and the grounds are timeless. Time to put down roots.
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