Tirol the horse lives on in house development’s name

Tommy Barker finds Cork houses named after racehorse Tirol are stable buys.

EXTENDED to the back with a sun room and breakfast room in a distinctive add-on with vaulted timber roof, this home 3 Tirol Avenue on the edge of Cork’s Douglas village is one of the first of its type to come up for sale for several years. And, it’s going to come under heavy viewings.

Tirol Avenue, in the Paddocks scheme on Maryborough Hill, got its name from its developers’ interest in horse racing. Businessman and builder John Horgan had spotted the potential of a horse called Tirol, trained it up and he went on to win major races including the Classic 2000 Guineas in Newmarket and the Curragh, before enjoying a retirement stud career in Ireland and India.

Tirol the horse’s hey-days were back around 1989/1990, when paydays stretched to £353,000 in race winnings, the equivalent of €450,000. Now, with a house market galloping off again (after falling dramatically at the overly steep price stakes of the boom-to-bust,) that €450k sum’s not even within an ass’s roar of catching No 3 Tirol Avenue as it comes out of the stalls.

The 1,830 sq ft detached four-bed home at 3 Tirol Avenue is guided at €530,000 by Ann O’Mahony and Sheila O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald, who say the c 25-year old house is in good order, with very useful ground floor layout, and an attic level fourth bedroom with shower room.

Tirol Avenue is sort of the mid-range of house styles and sizes up in the architect Roddy Hogan-designed Paddocks, by the foot of Maryborough Hill, which also includes townhouses, and large detacheds of up to 3,000 sq ft. At one stage, the biggest Paddocks homes were hitting the €1.5m mark, and Tirol Avenue homes were in the sub-€1m bracket. The most recent reported sale in Tirol Avenue was three years ago, at €465,000, and that was for an example deliberately reduced from four to three bedrooms by its then-owners for a better master suite. Now, with demand clearly ahead of trading-up supply and with competitive bidding putting the wind up buyers who sat and waited for the market to turn, Paddocks houses are back as strong sellers. Two of the larger types have recently gone over asking prices, over and under the €700k level with one of the best in the upper section reportedly making close to €750,000.

Tirol Avenue homes are about two-thirds of the size, and now it also seems two-thirds the price, of those larger Paddocks offers, and are no slouches in their own right. They’re slimmer, and deep, and tall, with high roof ‘hats’ which give good headroom at attic level. Here, the first floor has three bedrooms with one en suite and main bathroom, with proper stair access to the top floor’s fourth bedroom and shower room.

But, it’s at ground level where the space really is. This layout has reception rooms left and right of the meanly narrow front hall section, but the back half then has a family/TV room, kitchen/dining, as well as sun room and they interconnect — a good mix for day-to-day family living, with more quiet rooms to the front for evening chillaxing. Site size is relatively modest, with fenced back garden and off-street parking on a gravel drive.

The Hogan-designed homes here are easy on the eye, with a mix of dash. brick and tile and bay window and they’ve always been coveted, hugely-popular trading up options on the Douglas/Maryborough Hill fringe just above the Fingerpost junction.

Despite some traffic congestion at peak times, it seems Maryborough Hill has held a property primacy perch, with a clutch of architect-designed new homes now being built on 10 serviced sites (sites sold early last year at up to €300,000 each) opposite the Maryborough Hotel and Spa — where a new €500,000 orangery is being built for functions.

VERDICT: And, they’re off.

Maryborough Hill, Cork €530,000

Sq m 170 (1,830 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 4

BER rating: D1

Best feature: Ever-popular development