Ovals offers touch of style and space in Rochestown Road area
Of all of the varied higher-end house developments around Cork’s outer Douglas and Rochestown suburbs, it seems likely that the Ovals is the one that flies under the radar most of all.
There’s only 17 detached houses in this niche scheme near the bottom of Clarkes Hill and the ring road access roundabout, and only three have ever changed hands in the years since they were first built and sold, back in 1994, at the start of the ten-year economic boom period.
Now, an excuse to enter the cul de sac hillside scheme, have a look about and even to buy, has come about witht arrival this month of No 12 The Ovals on the market.
Estate agent Mark Gosling of Behan Irwin Gosling guides this well-built, detached five-bed home at €680,000, about the level of recent comparable sales at The Paddocks on Maryborough Hill, and though it’s a bit further out of Douglas, he expects the same sort of buying cohort interest and viewings as the Paddocks and Mount Oval’s bigger builds tend to get.
It’s a two-storey home of 2,350 sq ft, with a further 200 sq ft of adaptable floored attic space, and he says when it was built it was the largest house within The Ovals.
No 12’s owners have been here from day one, and are over a back across to America a lot of time, hence their decision to go for a low maintenance garden and grounds – but they didn’t do it on the cheap.
They drafted in Cork garden designer Brian Cross for planting advice, and as a result, there’s plenty of exterior colour.
In front, the house is close enough to its boundary not to feel like there’s a supplanted lawn, with lots of low-growing shrubs and heathers, and there’s gated access on either side of the double-fronted house to the wedge-shaped back garden.
Back here, it’s all shrubs, trees, birch and bamboo, patios and paving, several rafts of decking, and lots and lots of gravel in between as well, laid out in an angled, geometric format so as to engage the eye: you might miss the green of grass, but there’s been an effort made, and dividends returned, from attention to layout and planting detail.
It’s quite immaculate inside, with little sign of wear for a 20 year old house, and has a front-to-back reception room to the right of the central hall, with pleasant russet-hued wallpaper with horizontal bands on the walls, has an open fireplace, front bay window.
It has sliding patio doors on the side wall by one of the solid entrance gates, and alongside a further set of patio doors open to a 14’ by 14’ sun room/dining room, with solid roof and overlooking the back and side garden’s greenery.
Back here too, a cut-out wall section opens this bright room (two overhead Veluxes set into a pine-sheeted sloped ceiling ) opens to the kitchen, sharing the same tiled floor, and kitchen unit are a simple vanilla-coloured selection, with built-ins and a small island.
It’s quite probably original to 1994, before big, blow-out kitchens heaving with grainte tops and bells and whistles came into must-have favour. Nothing wrong with it, either.
Flooring in the hall, in large main living room and the second, smaller family room is all in maple, and the ground floor also has a utility, and guest WC, and hall with teak front door, with leaded side window panels.
Travel upstairs, and four of this home’s five bedrooms are carpeted underfoot, one has pine floors, and the master one has an en suite (but, again typical of the day, no dressing room, despite its up-market credentials), with good quality double shower, while the main family bathroom has a shower over the bath.
Inside and out the look is easy on the eye, not the sort of look that dates it immediately, and the builders put a bit of effort into dressing up the front facade, with rendered bands amid the dash, and there’s a lower brick section too, and brick is also used in the rear sun-room’s low external walls, and right up on top, as chimney stack tops.
Also adorning this style of house in The Ovals (there’s a few variations) are some clay tiles on the right hand window bay and apex, the pvc windows are slightly arched on top with glazing bars between the panes, and the roof ridge tiles are all serrated for a sort of repeat finial or saw-tooth effect.
A well-presented and preserved example of the type, a rare market offer in a small scheme, and gardens that nearly mind themselves.
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