House of the week: Douglas Road, Cork City €300,000
There’s Laurelwood, Beechwood, and Fernwood, for example, but this one-off which book-ends Belmont Place with its enormously long, slender south-facing back garden is known simply by its name, Daltonville.
Daltonville is just on the Douglas side of St Finbarr’s Hospital, making this des-res essentially a suburban residence, a leisurely promenade from Cork’s city centre, and its old hub of commerce, the South Mall.
Daltonville fits that quaint description of “a gentleman’s residence” on several fronts, but most notably because that is exactly what it has been for many, past decades, being an original family home to a gent who’d had worked in a bank, and who was a familiar sight along this stretch, taking a walk with his dalmation dog.
They made a striking ensemble, the dog in its spots, and the owner in his tweeds.
Their look and demeanor could have graced the pages of Country Life, but being just on the Douglas side of St Finbarr’s Hospital, their pad is a city or, at least, suburban residence now in its essence, a leisurely stroll away from Cork’s city centre, and its old hub of commerce, the South Mall.
Modestly unrevealing on the outside, yet beguiling, Daltonville’s a double-fronted, three-bay house, with a long central hallway past its formal, stucco-columned entrance porch and within, is a delight of antiquity and originality.
That authenticity starts with a stained glass fan light window over the internal pitch pine door, with old and worn brass foot-plate at its step.
The architectural interest gathers apace: there’s pitch pine panelling or wainscoting, set on the diagonal, along the hall’s length, either side, finished in a dark varnish which currently lends a sombre tone at the outset.
Stripped back of its varnish (instead of being repainted cream?) it could lighten up and be just lovely.
Left and right of the hall are decent reception rooms, perhaps 16’ deep and with 10’ high ceilings, with simple plaster cornices and picture rails, and each room has its original fireplaces, or ‘chimneypieces’ as originally termed.
This is a deep house too, and behind those duo of 16’ deep rooms are a (one-time) dining room, and an original kitchen, with scullery off in a slender annex.
For today’s buyers, there really isn’t a kitchen worth talking about — it will be another thing to add to Daltonville’s lengthy ‘to-do’ list.
Listed for sale with Michael Downey of ERA Downey McCarthy, it’s going to attract dreamers as well as the more hard-nosed, and although it carries a guide price of just €300,00 for its 2,000 sq ft, its eventual budget will grow after that.
It will swallow €100,000, easily, and may more slowly digest and savour the bones of perhaps €200,000 more if plans are suitably extravagant (Two doors away the walk-in condition but much smaller mid-terraced No 5 Fernwood is under offer with Hyde Auctioneers, at a reported €315,000.)
ERA’s Mr Downey admits the four-bedroomed Daltonville needs renovation and refurbishment, but adds that with imagination, sensitivity and TLC, it could be a fantastic family home once more.
More than a refurb, it needs to be opened up to the back and to the south and the sun and the gardens, as that’s where any new, gentrifying occupants will find themselves drifting to, like moths, to the light.
Right now, a door under the stairs open to a back yard and garden, with outhouses either side, and with a first floor bathroom and separate WC block overhead, supported on steel columns and accrows.
It’s one solution to ablutions.
Daltonville’s hugely-long sliver of back garden could be 300’ or 400’ feet long, not wide enough for a soccer pitch, but with plenty of stretch for an archery range.
Here’s a cue now for Daltonville’s further string to its sales’ bow, to set home-hunters all a-quiver: there’s side, gated access (shared with a couple of neighbours) just to the left, which opens up access to the back garden for private, off-street parking, and for renovation access.
That lane runs to the old Nemo Rangers GAA club pitch, sold by Nama for development for c 100 homes, so whoever bought it might eye up Daltonville and its gardens, to find Nemo access.
: will it be bid away to blazes?
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