House of the Week: Douglas Road, Cork €650,000

Sq m 184 (2,000sq ft)

Some houses have statues of eagles perched on top of pillars, setting a certain sort of tone at their entrances. However, for many years Garthlea, on Cork’s Douglas Road, had real, live, lay-about Labrador retrievers on notional guard duty for its owner, a woman who did the interior design and furnishings at Ashford Castle, and Waterville Lake Hotel in the 1960s and 1970s.

This detached home, practically hidden behind high walls between the Bellair estate and the Cross Douglas Road, was home in recent decades to Mrs Eva Andrews, nee Mulcahy, a woman of considerable Irish business and political pedigree — born into the Mulcahy clan of hotel lore, and married into the Andrews family of political dynasty.