House of the week: Douglas Road, Cork City €320,000
Heck, the woman selling up here, to get a house with a dedicated home-baking kitchen for a fledgling business on the rise, is even called Mary Terry.
For years a familiar face of the Irish Examiner, Mary Terry this year gave up her day job as this paper’s public office manager to indulge her creative love of baking, running her business, Mary Terry Cakes, from home.
From this very home, and the icing on top is the fact her daughter Carrie’s another hands-on cake-making fiend.
But, they need now to go bigger on the kitchen front for their growing and multi-layed customer base, who’ve an appetite for her quirky bakes, hence this domestic house sale.
Set on the main Douglas Road, near St Finbarr’s Hospital campus and just a short walk to the city centre, No 5 Fernwood packs more weight than its slender exterior might suggest.
For one, you mightn’t suspect that there’s a stairs up to an attic level/bedroom 3, with Velux to the back overlooking literally acres of greenery?
Or, that there’s rear lane access to a back garden with a bit of a dog-leg shape, allowing for off-street parking if needs be?
Or, that once past the front door, the link from front drawing room to rear kitchen/dining extension, and on again to a south-facing deck and garden, means you naturally gravitate to the kitchen — cake smells notwithstanding?
It’s on offer with Der O’Riordan of East Cork-based Hyde Auctioneers, who guides No 5 at €320,000, reckoning it will be a smart buy for a professional or couple, who’ll plump for the convenience — and appreciate its charms.
Handily, it’s set a bit back off the road, with old brick wall and wrought iron gate and fence plus front garden, and the adjacent and varied terraces Fernwood, Laurelwood and Beechwood were built in the mid-1800s with style and detailing for the ‘gentry’ of the 19th century who lined up to buy.
Many still have enormously long back gardens, but mostly they are only cake-sliver wide, going back to Nemo’s old pitches and the stone wall boundaries of the hospital.
Resales are quite rare along this stretch, now firmly back in favour with owner-occupiers because of the primacy of the location and convenience.
For those who want their cake and eat it, as a domestic trifle the c 1,120 sq ft No 5 Fernwood has a quite deep front room with antique fireplace and understairs storage, with two side windows and a central door to the extended, and very bright, kitchen/dining room.
The first floor has two bedrooms, the largest to the front with two windows facing the Douglas Road, the second bedroom behind has garden views, and there’s a bathroom with shower, next to the second stairs up to the attic bedroom, store or walk-up dressing room and robes.
There’s scope for any new occupants to extend No 5 to the back at first-floor level, as the single story extension below was built to allow for this possibility, adds Ms Terry.
Right now, the room out back is home to a welcoming and hard-worked kitchen (the timber floor here would be lifted to another level by the simple expedient of being painted cream?), with painted units, funky colour touches and lighting, with wooden counters and under-slung ceramic sink, plus several comfy seating spaces and dining table, with French doors to the gardens and sunny, sitting out raised deck.
Mid-way down the south-facing, hedged-in garden is an old apple tree (apple pie, anyone?) with rosy-cheeked cookers, ripe for the picking.
There’s a long beech-tree lined shared access avenue to the side of No 6 next door, with gate access on the Douglas Road, When open, this gives off-street parking options for an out-of sight section of No 5’s back garden, and that lovely lane leads on hundreds of yard more to the old Nemo playing pitches to the south — it’s all bit of a secret world. Yum.
Dig in.
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