Orchard Road peach

Tommy Barker visits a plum buy within a stroll of Cork city centre close to UCC.

Orchard Road, Cork City

€565,000

Sq m 184 (2,000 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 4

BER Rating: C3

Best Feature: Location

FIRST glance, Maryknoll might not get the architectural and design pulses racing - but, for those home-hunters who put location up at the top of their priorities, this is going to be a top buy.

Maryknoll, a one-off dormer bungalow of c 2,000 sq ft by Bride View Developments, was built 20 years ago on the former tennis court of a detached c 50 year old home here, by a family who’d been one of the earliest arrivals on Orchard Road.

The several dozen homes here were built on what was, indeed, a former orchard, belonging in decades and centuries past to the Jennings family who owned Brookfield House through several generations, and that imposing yellow-brick pile is now in UCC ownership and part of its main medical campus.

When Maryknoll’s vendors built their first house here, Orchard Road was gated at either end, with a grass lane up the middle, and the road, with a chicane in the middle, was also home for while to a small hotel, the Glengarriff, which subsequently was replaced by six luxury apartments.

Since the 1990s, developers O’Brien and O’Flynn built the Brookfield Village student and holiday complex on other Brookfield House grounds, with leisure centre and a 25m pool. They later built 15 detached houses at The Grove, at the lower end of Orchard Road where auctioneers Casey and Kingston last month went over their €470,000 asking price on a 1,600 sq ft four-bed marketed in May of this year, and now making close to €500,000.

That level of already-gauged local interest and bidding is possibly guiding the asking sum now on the detached dormer Maryknoll, priced at €565,000 by estate agent Sam Kingston of Casey and Kingston and who predicts quite a widespread interest at that sort of price point.

. It’s got two excellent first floor en suite bedrooms (crying out now for larger dormer windows than the originals seen here) and downstairs are two more bedrooms, one with a tiled floor and en suite , while the other bedrooms shares access to a guest WC.

To the front are two reception rooms, one large, the other one modest, and there’s a central hall with stairs while behind, a kitchen/dining/breakfast space has cherrywood units, a tiled floor, decent utility next to it, and there’s patio access from the dining space.

Overall condition is excellent, yet it’s essentially a bit dated, but dated only to the 1980s. Changing carpets and colours will immediately freshen it up for buyers who might look at future extensions, or sun-room add-on, overlooking the pleasant, screenedback garden

There’s double glazing, gas central heating, landscaped grounds and complete privacy, especially to the back with a very mature hedge screen behind in a split-level garden, with large terrace with a east/north aspect, which gets excellent morning light.

The front is brick and dash faced, with porch and bespoke stained glass panels either side of the hardwood front door.

VERDICT: The location is bomb-proof, and the house while modest enough for its setting (it was built as a trading-down home) is essentially modern.