Trading up: Clarkes Hill, Rochestown €430,000

New house developments have come a-plenty to the area around Clarkes Hill and Garryduff in Cork’s Rochestown: there may have been as 2,000 homes built in the last few decades ‘round Mount Oval, since the time Hill House Cottage itself was built on its own plot.

Size: 195sq m (2,103sq ft) 

Bathrooms: 2 

Bedrooms: 4 

BER: D2

This cheery yolk-yellow hued four-bed family home is one of the very few one-offs on this hill rising up above the Rochestown Road, pitched in more ways than one at the upwardly mobile, and in latter years served by both a bus route and a new national school for this burgeoning suburb.

Extended now, Hill House Cottage is an L-shaped bungalow of more than 2,000 sq ft, all on the one level and on a sloping quarter acre site next to Monswood.

It is listed for sale with Paul O’Shea and Ann o’Mahony of Shery FitzGerald, with a guide of €430,000 and has a south-west aspected garden and a large garage, as well as an unfinished games room/home office, with external access only, on one wing.

It’s in good overall condition, with a D2 BER, and new owners can decide to enjoy as-is, tweak or alter, or perhaps even seek to go up a level, as the hill has just had a dramatic, large contemporary build added to the mix at its lower end.

VERDICT: A sort of free-range option on the hill.