Trading up: Blackrock, Cork €239,000

Size: Sq m 140 (1,500 sq ft)

THERE’S more house than you’d expect beyond the front door of 7 Libertas Villas — this attractive Blackrock village home goes up, and out the back, to score well on the accommodation front.

No 7’s fresh on the spring market for its vendors who are looking to trade up, and it has all the signs of an engaging and warm family home, full of books, and play spaces, photos and music and colourful bedrooms, as well as garden games.

And, as it’s pretty much right in the heart of Cork’s Blackrock, there’s every amenity on the doorstep for easy family living. There are shops, schools, bars, cafes, delis and bakeries - including a wee one right next door at terraced Libertas Villas - while the bus stops 50 metres away, and there are walks galore. (Some 200 yards away, even closer to the village, a larger terraced home called Corella which was House of the Week here in February has gone over its €320,000 asking price after dozens of viewings via agent Timothy Sullivan.)

This mid-terraced home, dating to the early 1900s, is listed for sale with agent Brian Olden of Cohalan Downing, who describes it as “quirky, just that bit different and surprisingly spacious.” He guides it at €239,000 and can expect to be busy with viewings from a wide cross section.

It’s cheap enough to catch the eye of first-time buyers, big enough for traders up, and central enough for traders-in, keen on an easy, (sub)urban life in a part of the city that seems to have found a new energy: it’s certainly busy with walkers and markets each weekend, gratis of its Marina and Mahon harbour walks.

In fact, Blackrock is home to some of Cork’s most diverse housing, from new apartment schemes which have brought a young vibe to sedate period villas and piles, through posh estates and quaint old terraces, rows of old fishermen’s cottages, and all in between are gardens galore coming into spring glories. Despite its fresh paint colour, No 7 Libertas Villas doesn’t stand out too much: it looks well kept and modest, but keeps its treats — such as 100’ long south-facing back garden — private from the road.

Nor does it really look like a three-storey home from the front, but there’s a good attic space in these houses and quite a few on the terrace have made good use of this room upstairs. In No 7’s case, it’s home to two bedrooms with Veluxes, one front, one back, including a pretty girl’s bedroom, decked out in pink with an adjacent shower room en suite. There’s good stair access so it’s suitable for lots of ages.

The middle level is home to two other double bedrooms, as well as having a good-sized family bathroom, and the calmest room is the back one, with two south-facing square windows and a wall of mirrored and glazed built-ins.

A tall, slender sand-blasted window gives a discreet visual connection to the bathroom beyond, and the landing has yielded up some handy storage space as well, making for quite good use of floor plan here on the upper level.

But, it’s downstairs that really works for family living.

There’s a standard sized front room, used as a play space, and once past the long tiled hall the house opens to a back reception with brick fireplace, linked to a long kitchen extension which feeds through to a further conservatory add-on, full-south in aspect.

It all combines to make for a very deep house, essentially bright, and likely to have its sections used differently at different ends of the day — gravitating to the glass and sun by day, and back to the fire and hearth by evening and in winter, where the reduction in natural light won’t be minded. The simple expedient of a heavy curtain at the kitchen’s end means the glass-roofed conservatory can be closed off at night time in very cold weather, but it can’t really be used by day as it then blocks off the only daylight source to the kitchen.

Kitchen units, simple and in a L-shape, are cream coloured, with a gas hob and black and white chequered splashback tiles, and the floor’s done here in large, pale-hued porcelain tiles, while the more enclosed living room back towards the house’s core has a wood floor and a cosy feel.

The house is effectively four rooms deep downstairs, and it continues out and back through the back French doors: first up is a decked space, then a paved patio with shed, and beyond that again is a long strip of lawn, so there’s a mix of outdoor space to enjoy.

The garden boundary on the city side is a wall separating it from the old Passage West rail line below, now an amenity walk, and No 7 just misses out on having end-of-garden access to a green area in Post Office Lane on the Blackrock side. If this could be overcome it would give an extra dimension to No 7, as car access is on-street along the main Blackrock Road.

VERDICT: Should have wide appeal.