House of the Week: Private harbour home in Cork
It's the start of a weeklong celebration of the many, many marine joys of Cork Harbour, with a kick-off today of An Rás Mór, the up-to 28 kilometre Ocean to City race, seeing 600 participants in up to 200 craft racing from the glorious harbour’s mouth, right on up to the city centre.
The route skirts around much of Great Island, passing Cobh and then narrowing into the river Lee channel past Monkstown, between Rushbrooke and Glenbrook, where the paddlers’ and rowers’ path is cris-crossed by the Cross River Ferry, a facility which put large scale housing firmly on metropolitan Cork’s development map in the early 2000s.
The ferry, plus commuter rail line into Cobh and stopping at Rushbrooke two kms from Cobh itself, were spurs to builders like Fleming Construction, when they developed 600 homes at Rushbrooke Links, with another 500 or so new homes in neighbouring Rushbrooke schemes, making ‘harbour residents’ of thousands of people.
The owner of 10 Gardiners Walk, which is up by the very top of the long-completed Rushbrooke Links scheme, artist Sarah Iremonger, was already an appreciative Great Island resident, having previously lived at the period gem the Crescent in Cobh, and in 2007-2009, the NCAD and Crawford College graduate curated the Cork Harbour Project at the Sirius Art Centre, with outreach programmes to schools, and the involvement of many other artists.
When she made the move to what was then a new-build, around the corner and up above Rushbrooke and the river, she brought an artist’s aesthetic to her new perch.
Sarah Iremonger is now on the move once more, and her private harbour home (though ostensibly a typical enough three-bed, semi-detached) is now for sale, blessed with splashes of colour in the garden, especially a just flowered mature cherry tree, and adorned with art works, many of them her own.
Might she ‘throw one in’ in the sale, as goodwill gesture? Maybe something with a ‘safe harbour’ theme? Sure, there’s no harm in asking.
No 10 Gardiners Walk in Rushbrooke Links has an asking price of €260,000 with Cobh estate agent, Johanna Murphy, and thus it’s within the grasp of a broad buying cohort and many, many first-time buyers.
It’s immaculate, and tasty, a private gallery cum home, with calming front reception room, rear kitchen/diner with side passage and rear garden access, three first floor bedrooms, with one en suite, and — crowning it all — a well-completed 18’ by 13’ attic conversion with stair access, Velux windows with black-out blinds, storage and good wi-fi.
That very useful top floor accounts for nearly 400 sq ft of this home’s 1,474 sq ft floor area tally, so without it it would be a 1,075 sq ft home, and Ms Iremonger has used one of the standard three bedrooms as a home office.
The kitchen’s a mix of fitted units and some stand-alone storage and small island, with pots and pans hanging overhead, indicating use for some serious cooking.
In front, there’s off-street parking and a tidy garden, plus garden seat for evening sun taking, and behind the garden’s all greened in, with seating bower/deck, shed with power supply, a glasshouse, multitudes of plants in pots, and a cherry tree which each spring repays the wisdom of planting good and early on, after a move to a new house and bare ground all those years ago.
For home hunters today, there’s quite the cherry-picking choice of commute and access options to a spot like 10 Gardiners Walk: you have the choice of car, a new Cobh bus service, bike, very regular commuter trains — and ferry boat.
Services close to Rushbrooke Links include a local Centra within the development in a mixed services building, there’s a Londis via Ballynoe and Newtown, there’s a national school in Rushbrooke, Cobh’s around the bay and the river ferry’s a short spin downhill, but a tougher climb back up if on foot or by bike.
Sale ahoy
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