Trading up: Clonakilty, West Cork €495,000

Sq m: 240 (2,590 sq ft)

West Cork’s Clonakilty has just scooped a top RIAI ‘public choice’ architectural award for the renewal and remaking of its Georgian Emmet Square — now, here’s another treasure in the town. For sale just an uphill stroll from the town, and on a rare acre of immaculate cherished gardens is Tawnies Cottage, a graceful extended villa-like bungalow, with an upstairs study or optional bed four.

Attractively old-world, it’s got well-size reception rooms with views over the grounds. Joint selling agents Ray O’Neill of Sherry FitzGerald and John Hodnett of Hodnett Forde say the gardens are possibly the best in Clonakilty, having been planted and tended over a long number of years.

Despite the seemingly diminutive ‘cottage’ in its title, Tawnies Cottage is no slouch in space terms: it’s got almost 2,600 sq ft in all, with 2,300 sq ft of that all at ground level. There’s are two reception rooms, front and back, with a kitchen in between, while a dining room to the side accesses both the kitchen and the front 18’ by 13’ living room. There’s also an office, storage rooms, and two en suites, with a dressing room also with the master suite, and the optional fourth bedroom is above the back living room, via spiral stairs.

VERDICT: It’s like being in the country, only in the award-winning (again!) town.