House of the Week: Barrister and tech pioneer’s €765k Shanakiel family home on the market

Across the bridge to college — the owners' children were able to walk to UCC over the Shakey Bridge from this home in a mature north Lee suburb 

10 The Grove, Shanakiel. Pictures: John Roche

Shanakiel, Cork City
€765,000
Size	197 sq m (2,100 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	D2

The owner of 10, The Grove in Cork’s Shanakiel doesn’t hang around, once she makes up her mind: she only decided to move in mid-February, and here she is in early March, just gone to market with her family home of the past 50 years.

The chance to right-size and relocate from the city’s elevated Shanakiel down to the southside, came about when the sale of a brand new-build on the Model Farm Road fell through at the last minute — and as the woman of the house here at No 10 The Grove had previously inquired about that sold-out the scheme last year, she got offered the out-of-the-box semi-d, ready to move into.

Mary O’Keeffe jumped into action: she did the buying deal with Sherry FitzGerald, has listed her family’s well-tended and much-loved 2,100 sq ft five bed detached also with Sherry Fitz, and is out this week looking at kitchen options for her new purchase.

“The Grove was 10 years old when we bought it 50 years ago so we were only the second owners ever,” notes Mary, adding “it was only our second-ever home too, and we bought it when we moved back to Cork from Dublin.”

She and her late husband Pat O’Keeffe had met in UCC as students, he doing electrical engineering, she doing arts and music, later going to Dublin for work.

Work opportunities brought Pat back south when he set up the substantial semi-conductor company General Instrument/ General Semiconductor c 1982, later serving on its international board as well as on the board of the IDA and other bodies.

At its peak, GI/GS employed about 1,000 in the 1990s, and 670 jobs were lost when it closed in 2001, a number of years after Pat O'Keeffe had died very suddenly, aged just in his 40s.

No 10 The Grove was a hectic busy family home for the couple, who added a large extension about 15 years after moving in, with five now-adult children, two in Cork, two in Dublin and one in Kerry.

“It was very happy home and busy, and a great house for parties too. The children went to schools in the city and later could walk to UCC over the Shakey Bridge,” says Mary, who also returned to UCC as a mature student to study law, qualifying as a barrister.

Was Fitzgerald Park a playground just over the Shakey Bridge for the children growing up? Mary laughs: “It was for me too, I grew up on Connaught Avenue, off College Road, the park seems to have been there forever!”

Apple's European headquarters is in Cork's Hollyhill Industrial Estate

What has changed up Shanakiel way over the past decades has been the remarkable rise and rise of the Apple plant on the city northern crown, as at Apple’s Hollyhill HQ, employment has surged from 60 in 1980 to over 6,000 today, spanning 90 nationalities.

Globally, Apple’s 2025 turnover was $416bn (€380 bn), and profits were $112bn (€100bn), with a decent chunk of that change making its way into Irish exchequer coffers via corporation tax, salaries and other spends. All of which makes the €765,000 AMV pinned to 10 The Grove on the route up to the Apple campus from the city and Sunday’s Well look almost ‘quaint’. In fact, you could buy 500,000 houses at that sort of sum for Apple’s 2025 turnover...

10 The Grove, Shanakiel

One-off No 10 The Grove is “an impressive family home with an understated yet unique class, with lots of character and space,” say Ann O’Mahony and Katie Fennessy of Sherry FitzGerald, who did the uber-quick listing preparation in the past three and a half weeks for up-and-away vendor Mary O’Keeffe.

Likely buyers are medics, relocators and traders-up, as at 2,100 sq ft with five bedrooms on good grounds “there’s plenty of room to grow into, and good proportions,” says Ms Fennessy.

In close proximity is Apple’s Hollyhill campus and thousand of jobs, and several senior Apple employees already live in and around Shanakiel and Sunday’s Well. Close too are the Mercy Hospital, Bon Secours and the HSE’s St Mary’s Health Centre (the old Orthopaedic), with CUH the opposite direction, to the south.

One of 10 The Grove’s five bedrooms is effectively double aspect, 22’ long with an en suite at the end: downstairs one of the main reception rooms is also front-to back, used as living/dining, with a deep bay window and period-style fireplace. Good fireplaces also feature in a second reception room, as well as in the room-sized entrance hall.

The detached 1960s era house has a modern front door, double glazing, a D2 BER, good bathrooms and a sleek kitchen with quartz tops, Rangemaster double oven and gleaming ceramic Belfast-style sink.

West facing, it has off-street parking for several cars on a block drive, with a mature and private rear garden.

10 The Grove, Shanakiel

VERDICT: There’s just over a dozen or so houses in The Grove, and the Price Register shows 12 sales since 2015, but three of those were houses that sold and sold again, with top prices of €650,000 and €670,000 paid in 2024 for two, No 13, and one named Inagh.

Extended and very well-kept No 10 is going to push well past them in the price stakes… one last family party beckons.