Trading up: Cobh, Cork Harbour, €299,000

There’s a suitably royal sound to the elevated Cobh town period home called Kingswell, built back in the days when Cobh was the British naval port Queenstown, and this sizeable semi-d is said to have had an identical match in Dublin’s Kingstown, now called Dún Laoghaire.

Dating to 1850, Victorian Kingswell is a 3,500 sq ft seven-bed house up on the High Road, with views over Cork harbour and where the new marina is to be built. At one stage, it was the local Norwood School and its current private owners have been here over a quarter century.

They’ve done some work and it has been re-roofed and some windows have been changed, but there’s still lots of internal original architectural features, says estate agent Johanna Murphy, who has reduced the price from €350,000 sought back in 2014 to €299,000 now.