House of the week: Beauty, charm and joy at Ellerslie

Location: Douglas, Cork €2.75million

THE last time Ellerslie came up for sale, back in 1999, its buyers only visited two days before it was due to be auctioned. They kept a low profile, at the edge of an open viewing, and only came to the fore for the big moment on the day of auction. It was, they admit, very much a spur of the moment decision — but they haven’t regretted it a single day since.

Back then, pre-auction, we remarked here that it was one of only a dozen or so Cork houses of this sort of stature and quality, and that buying a place like Ellerslie was, in effect, a sort of pension.

It had been just that for the previous owner, an architect, who’d been here 25 years, selling in ‘99 to trade down.

The current owners, conversely, had wanted to trade up for their family. Fifteen years on — and also now with children reared and flown the coop — they too are set to repeat the process.

Back in 1999, Ellerslie had a £650,000 guide, pricey for the time, and it was bid well above that at the competitive auction. In today’s euro currency terms, it made over €1m at the time.

The family first stayed there a few years, getting used to the house, the way they used the rooms and the way the light came around it throughout the day and the seasons. Then, they moved out, and went for a full, top-to-bottom conservation, extension and upgrade of the Tudor/timber-look house, with the input of architect Tom Coughlan, who has worked on several top Douglas Edwardian homes. He, at first, envisaged putting an extra bit on the left hand side to match and balance the look of the right side. However, the owners felt the size they had, over three levels, was more than enough.

The result now? One of the very best period suburban houses anywhere in Cork. It was good before, but it’s better now. Dearer, too: agents Catherine McAuliffe and Michael O’Donovan of Savills Cork guide it at €2.75m. Does that mean the slump is over? Let’s wait and see.

Dating to 1905, Ellerslie is a 3,400 sq ft family home par excellence, on a site of 0.7 of an acre, on the Douglas village end of the salubrious Well Road, and the grounds (behind electric gates) are as well tended as the entire house is presented.

Originally, this house’s back garden would have stretched to the rear access lane behind Woodview, where Savills last weekend launched another large home, on a remarkable 1.5 acres, guiding €1.85m and needing renovation. Slump all banished with such sizeable price tags coming one after another? Again, let’s wait and see. Ellerslie’s going to go well: just how well is the multi-million euro question.

With its €2.75m guide, it is dearer than the last two big Cork suburban sales, the Rectory in Blackrock, and Windyridge on the Rochestown road, the former on two acres, the latter on three acres, and they ranged from €1.5m-€2m, in overall good condition.

By contrast, the far more expensive Ellerslie is just in sheer, robust good health, seeming to have turned back the clock of time, and has been beefed up sizewise too, with add-on garden buildings.

Added on is a rear sunny, west-facing kitchen/family dining room extension, complete with Clive Christian kitchen of the highest quality, in painted oak (more on the kitchen anon.)

The owners also added on a small detached building, used as a very workmanlike gym, with shower room, and it has access to handy overhead storage: it’s not quite big enough for use as an option for an au pair, but is a great chill out den for teenagers, as a gym or home office. It has been carefully detailed, so the red brick is a very good match for that used 110 years ago when Ellerslie was first built, down to bevel-edge feature bricks. Complete with painstaking pointing work, and timber gables, it’s a testament to quality builder Jerry O’Driscoll and a range of craftsmen.

Every bit of Ellerslie has been redone, or enhanced, and it starts from the new slate roof downwards. Walls have been insulated, plumbing and electrics all done, with a sophisticated zoned heating system, pumped to large, almost old-school sized cast iron rads.

The house is now fitted with a central vacuum, and retained original features include the stained glass panels in the porch, along with its mosaic tiled floor, fireplaces in all the main rooms, plus a bedroom or two, the hall floor’s narrow strip pitch pine is pitch-perfect, and the stairs banistder is rock solid, wending a way up through all three levels, with a quality red wool carpet, held on each tread by brass stair rods.

More than a match for the house’s original windows are the sash and casement replacements, hand-crafted in painted hardwoods with small panes on top, with slender, unobtrusive double-glazing with brass fittings. They were made to measure by carpenter John Murray, whom the owner contacted after noting his small classified ads in the Examiner week after week. They ended up giving him months of work, and they’ll still be in situ in a century’s time.

Ellerslie’s two front, east-facing reception rooms have antique fireplaces and a double aspect, and the dining room now has an arched alcove where a serving hatch to the kitchen used to be. The former kitchen is now a home office, extensively shelved in mahogany, and internal doors are also mahogany.

Looking original to the house, but added on 10 years ago, is the kitchen/dining room to the house’s rear, a single storey add-on with double pitched slate roofs. The kitchen/breakfast room is about 30’ by 18’, with cream tiled floor with underfloor heating, and painted Clive Christian kitchen, with ornate corbals, and lots of integrated Mile and Neff appliances. It houses a very large multi-oven Aga, plus back-up electric Aga as well for summer use. The range has a splashback in Fired Earth tiles, there’s an unusual wide fluted Shaws Belfast sink with brass mixer tap and teak drainers, and worktops are New York bevel granite.

Arched French doors lead to a sweep of sun terrace/patio, with a neat copper roof section just over the doors, and the patio’s paved with Liscannor flagstones, with lots of outdoor seating and dining space, facing west.

Across the kitchen, to the right, is a large utility, again with external access.

The quality of finish and specification doesn’t drop a whit once upstairs. The first floor is home to four bedrooms, all with coved ceilings and en suite bathrooms, plus main family bathroom. All are tiled with up-market Tagina Italian ceramic and porcelain tiles. Off the master bedroom (with double aspect, and great front lawn and garden fountain views from its wide window bay) is a large en suite with claw-foot bath and separate shower. A second front bedroom has a lovely raised window seat in its smaller, more curved bay, and these rooms, like the main bathroom, have glimpsed views over Well Road houses towards the Douglas estuary and tennis club.

Up at attic level now are two very characterful bedrooms, with lots of eaves storage, yet another bathroom and a sauna and separate Tylo steam room. Like the rest of the house, walls are painted in whites and off-whites, so if a new owner wants to change personality, it’s a simple matter of a choice of colours, or papers - and the job’s done.

Outside in the 0.7 acre of gardens, design is by Brian Cross, delivered by Pat O’Sullivan Landscaping, and although two venerable monkey puzzle trees had to be taken down for safety’s sake, there’s considerable maturity all around for privacy, with a screening back boundary of copper beech separating the dwelling from a bungalow (off Woodview), built by earlier owners, when they traded down in the 1970s. There’s laurel at the boundaries, beech, Chinese maple, cordylines, hydrangeas, and roses.

Back at the sunny terrace, fringed with matching red brick and discretely lit, there’s also a gurgling water feature among shrubs and rockery, and to the rear of the gym building is a sort of canopy or roofed veranda extension, to enable all-weather barbecuing, timber storage, etc. A second, smaller garden room in the opposite corner of the back garden has a similar-styled roof screening and brick and timber detailing.

In contrast to the enclosed, sheltered nature of the back garden the front is more formal, with very long lawns separating it from the high limestone boundary walls and brick entrance pillars (electric gates) along the Well Road. The boundary end is home to a large water feature, a pond with cast iron statute fountain of the Three Graces, a reproduction of the original Three Graces, by Italian sculptor Canova (some casts of his elegant neoclassical statues feature in Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery). The Graces represent beauty, charm and joy—- a bit like Ellerslie, itself.

VERDICT: What a home. One of Cork’s very best, it will test the market, and buyers’ wallets.