House of the week: Rochestown, Cork, €560,000

Home hunters looking for a bit of rural privacy and an individual home in an area as popular as Cork’s Rochestown should consider getting themselves to a monastery — or, at least, to Monastery Road.

Size: 174 sq m (1,875 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 2

BER: E1

Best Feature: Setting 

This stand-alone home called Fernville is on an acre, set just next to the grounds of the Capuchin Monastery and Rochestown College, with the boys’ second level school founded in 1884, the same year as the GAA was established.

This detached and extended house which is new to market also dates to the 19th century, and could be as much as 150 years old, and is holding strong at that.

Fernville comes to market with Ann O’Mahony of Sherry FitzGerald, who guides at €560,000: the market recovery in the past year or two has seen a number of €500,000-plus upper/mid-market sales around the greater Rochestown area, as well as sale terms agreed on the superb Ben Truda at about €1.5m, near the Rochestown Park Hotel.

Fernville is a different property type to its comparable price level sales, in nearby developments like Abbotswood (1 Abbotswood Downs sold recently for €575,000) and Jamesmount and Mount Oval also has had 2015 sales in the €500-700k bracket, but this one-off is harder to value.

One-offs in the same Monastery Hill hinterland include a 25-year old dormer on four acres called Beechbury, which sold in 2013 for €500,000, and a 1970s whopper called Villa Sol, with 5,000 sq ft of house plus swimming pool, on an 1.2 acres, has also finally sold this year, after years on and off the market, making €670,000 according to the Price Register.

At one stage, around 2006, Villa Sol had high hopes of selling for as much as €2.6m.

Up on a height, and on its own acre, Monastery Road’s west-facing Fernville was itself extended about 30 years ago, and now has a sun room on one side, and garage with overhead Velux on the other.

In between, it has three good reception rooms across the front, two of them with those bay windows, plus there’s a bedroom to the front.

Behind, the house has three more bedrooms, office and family bathroom, around and off an L-shaped hall.

Then the gable end to the north has a great-sized 24’ by almost 12’ kitchen, with lovely country home character thanks to a wood-burning stove and high, wood-panelled ceilings, and there’s enough space to haul clothes up on rope and pulley to a lath Sheila Maid airer as well. Next to the kitchen, grafted on the end wall, is a sun room, with about 150 sq ft of space.

Any new owners will spend further, either on energy efficiency upgrades or at the very least on an interiors revamp.

Decor is dated (but age-appropriate), with lots of old fashioned wallpapers and some ceilings are painted a variety of shades, from orange to mushroom and white, but there’s good head space with high ceilings, some cornice work, picture rails etc, and several old fireplaces add to the period home feel.

And clever use has been made of spaces under some windows, such as in the lounge, with low, padded window seat and books storage underneath.

Fernville is towards the back of its almost oval shaped site, with farmland behind to the east and its main views are west, over the Monastery Road and a wooded valley where residential development crept in during the 1990s and 2000s.

It is a short walk back down the hill to Rochestown, to the pub, food emporium Cinnamon Cottage, and old rail line harbour amenity walk as well.

Selling agents Sherry FitzGerald say it will make a fantastic, and individual, family home in new hands and add the amount of garden is ideal for children to roam free around. If they are boys, they can even go to secondary school through the fields.

VERDICT: Outstanding, in its field.