House of the week: Sunday’s Well, Cork City €190,000
There are houses of all shapes, sizes and finishes up in Cork’s Sunday’s Well, where the bohemian pace can be quite frozen in time, and terraces and pairs of semis with variously Georgian and Victorian roots stand intact for generations.
Very little new gets to show its face, although a dramatic pairing of two little and large new builds have just gone on site at 23/24 Sunday’s Well Road, on an incredibly difficult mid-terraced site.
A pair of medics are behind the ambitious build below the road via Cetti Construction (with links to Bride View Developments).
Architects for that contemporary pairing, which will dramatically overlook Cork County Cricket Club are the acclaimed O’Donnell + Tuomey, who also did Cork’s St Angela’s College on an equally challenging vertiginous site, plus they did the Glucksman gallery, on the UCC campus, which is just about visible across the River Lee from Sunday’s Well.
The S/well area has homes that sell to swells for millions of euros. This is especially true for homes with river-fronting gardens, and there are those that sell for a fraction of that sort of price grandeur.
No 8, Sunday’s Well Avenue is firmly in the latter category, and it is priced at €190,000 by estate agent Tim Sullivan.
Old, probably cold, stone-built, and quirky up to its boots, it’s up above the road, entered through a green gate and an arched entrance under another house, and then a flight of outdoor steps.
This leads up to a graveled front viewing platform/ patio, which is south-facing, and great for sitting out and taking in the view over the city, and it’s even home to a rudimentary hand-built pizza oven.
Despite being terraced, it’s very private up here, and the double-fronted house (two front doors) has lots of space, lots of character, but it is not for the nervous, faint-hearted, or the weak of legs and limb, advises selling agent Tim Sullivan, given its stepped and restricted access.
However, house-hunters in this vicinity are not easily put off, especially those looking for homes of character so handily close to the city centre.
An example was the sale of 146 Sunday’s Well Avenue, which can be glimpsed across the road from loftier No 8.
No 146 went for sale as total doer-upper a year or so ago with Savills, guiding €125,000, and viewers were advised to bring a builder.
Well, it got about 75 viewings, and sold for way over the guide, making €165,000 before any renovations get factored in.
(No 9 Sunday’s Well Avenue is on the Price Register for 2012, at a paltry €15,000, but may that have been a family transfer, or other such non-market value transaction?)
No 8’s in reasonably good shape, especially for its considerable age, and has a ground-level third bedroom out its back, and also has a two more bedrooms upstairs, one needing a bit of work.
In addition, there’s a quirky hard-working kitchen (one of the occupants is a professional chef), in a room part-divided with a sitting room, a space that’s 23’ by 14’ in all.
The kitchen has a Belfast sink, and a Rangemaster oven and hob.
The sitting room/dining room section is 14’ by 11’, with a wood-burning stove in front of a tiled fireplace and a separate 16’ by 11’ living room has a further stove.
There’s also a utility and a good-sized shower room, rounding off the services and accommodation, and all the outdoor space then is out the front, for views and sun and light.
Given the interest shown in No 146 across the road, and the subsequent bidding on it, there’ll be curiosity alone to lure viewers to No 8.
So, watch out for the anonymous green door in a wall in an old house just up from the Avenue Bar, and negotiate those steps as you negotiate access, price, value, and hiking your belongings and solid fuels to your next-up front door, and outdoor pizza oven.
: No 8 could be quite the find.
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