House of the week: Ballygarvan, Cork €475,000

Size: 150 (1,600 sq ft)

There’s a glorious glenside setting for Brookwood, a hideaway family home with stables, land, stream and tended gardens, all just a couple of miles from Cork airport.

New to market, and being sold by its downsizing owners who built this four-bed bungalow nearly 20 years ago, it is a very rare offer, largely due to its amount of ground and privacy, so close to the city.

It’s just east of Ballygarvan village, above the Ballygarvan-Ballea Road which puts it within an easy strike of Carrigaline and all of the major Cork harbour employers, while just a few miles to the west is Five Mile Bridge, opening up routes to West Cork or to Kinsale. And, Cork city is only five miles away, over the hill, as is the airport with the adjacent Glen Road leading up to it via Farmers Cross.

A familiar nearby locational marker is the old Church of Ireland church on the main road, converted to studio and house by photographer John Daly. Behind are just a couple of houses, and a little-used cemetery, near the landscaped entrance drive to Brookwood, currently dotted with bobbing rabbits.

With some of its opposite, woodland boundary along that Glen Road, Brookwood is on four quite special acres, with the house forming a bit of a valley cluster, along with out-buildings and a yard that include six stables and tack room and store/kennels plus small sand arena. There are paddocks (c 2.5 acres), and great wildlife and bird life, and for those who love nature, the tracks created down the leafy glen are special.

The owners, clearly animal lovers, have taken ponies and traps down, and also hosted barbecues here in the wood by the sylvan steam and small waterfall: it’s a child’s, or animal’s paradise, ready to be roamed.

The property is just listed with agents Sheila O’Flynn and Johnny O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald, who guide at €475,000 and who says the location’s particularly strong and very accessible, yet private.

The vendors built from scratch 19 years ago, and with family reared are looking to pack up the saddle bags, trade down and build afresh on smaller grounds.

Brookwood is a four/five-bed 1,600 sq ft home in probably the best position on the 4.1 acres of grounds, with good parking and immaculate landscaping around the house itself, along with colourful beds, seating areas pergolas, patio and decking.

It’s a good family home as it stands, but given the acreage here, if it was extended the house would be much more of a match for its quite extensive grounds — see our Cover Story pages 8-11 for a quite dramatic case of where a house’s occupants knocked and rebuilt across the city at Upper Rocklodge, because the grounds there were so exceptional.

That’s hardly necessary here at Brookwood, but there’ll be a temptation perhaps to look at extension possibilities (initial planning favoured a reasonably modest dwelling,) such as a far larger sun-room, or perhaps extending upwards for another, dormer floor for bedrooms (with balconies) and views, and thus free up some of the ground floor for even more living areas.

It all would need planning permission, of course, but as it’s so discretely sited and mature now all around, that might not be as big an issue as when this was built day one. It has earned its right to be here by its charming glen, deserving to grow with it.

Current accommodation includes family living room/TV room, sun room, kitchen/dining room linking to a second sun room with windows on three sides, study and utility.

There are four bedrooms, one en suite with a room-sized dressing room (could be a fifth bedroom or nursery) and a compact enough sleeping area, plus a recently re-done family bathroom.

The house faces east, and west to the back, with stepped decking by the family room/kitchen sun room, which gets light most of the day. Sherry FitzGerald have open viewings Saturday May 17, 11.30 to 12.30pm

VERDICT: Tranquil Brookwood’s on a lovely section of ground, with leafy private woodland walks, space for children, pets and ponies, stables in situ, and a house rearing to go and to grow.