Reboot yourself at €895k Wellington Bridge Cork city period era home

Enlarged Rose Hill House is a hideaway find with Lee views through the trees

Fri, 17 Sep, 2021 - 19:53

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports Pictures John Finn

Lee Road, Cork City
€895,000
Size	325 sq m (3,500 sq ft)
Bedrooms	6
Bathrooms	4
BER	E1

ROSE Hill? Where’s that?

Sales of homes on Cork’s Rose Hill are few and far between: in fact, it’s below house hunters’ radars for the most part, and for several reasons.

First, there’s not that many homes with this address, just above and west of Wellington Bridge and Sunday’s Well.

Second, occupants tend to stay for years at a time, decades, or even generations, on both Upper and Lower Rose Hill, which are sort of tiered terraces, on the leafy south-facing hill looking over the weir by the Lee Fields.

View south from a nearby section of Rose Hill

At Rose Hill House, you hear the water at the weir for much of the time, but the actual view of the Lee itself is quite seasonal, as mature trees in this verdant setting tend to obscure the river vista in summer when in full growth.

Kitchen/diner is full-depth, with French doors to the south-facing patio

That same growth, in turn, obscures the views to Rose Hill’s lower set homes, and that’s more or less where Rose Hill House is set, private, discrete, more screened now most likely than when first built, in the latter end of the 19th century.

The period era, end of terrace house, owned by a family who are now trading down after a decade and a half in occupation, is an early autumn, upper-end of the market offer in Cork city’s western quadrant, coming at a time of very tight supply and strong demand, and is priced at €895,000 by its selling agent, Michael O’Donovan of Savills Cork.

Indian limestone patio has several seating spots

It’s had work done by his vendors, who bought around 2005, including wiring and plumbing, and before that by some other previous owner, who added the almost jaunty mansard-style roof some decades back, complete with Velux windows. The top floor created by this addition now holds three of the property’s six bedrooms, plus study and shower room.

Not just a big house, with 3,500 sq ft, thanks to its three levels, it’s also very wide, with main three-bay section flanked on the left/west by a slender wing, home to a ground floor wedge-shaped library, and on the right by a two-bay wing, now home to the modern kitchen/breakfast room, which then abuts the neighbouring house on the city side, with mature screening boundary between them.

With its origins put at 1895, Rose Hill House appears in fine fettle, with replacement Marvin sliding sash windows, has lots of period trim such as internal arches and niches, ceiling and other decorative plasterwork, fireplaces (including in some bedrooms), polished wood floors, upgraded kitchen with granite tops, good bathrooms, and lots of displayed original art and paintings to set it all off.

Likely to be warm thanks to a southerly aspect (the BER is an E1), it has gas central heating, and mains services, while modernity comes to the fore with CAT 5 cabling/fast broadband, and Bosch surround sound too.

Access is via a pedestrian entrance with an electric keypad, or via a double garage with an electric roller door. It leads to a front garden with its large expanse of sun-trap patio, recently redone with Indian limestone, with an extra-deep section in front of the dining area’s French doors, making for a lovely indoor/outdoor connection.

The front door is in the middle, set into a simple tall arch, with Wyatt-style sash windows on either side, ie with main sliding pain complement by slimmer side sashes, a pattern repeated on the windows directly above them also, with simpler, more regular sashes above the door, and off to the side.

Also, separately access to the rear of the house is a wide utility, behind the kitchen, as well as a wine cellar, all following the general good advice of having the best rooms to the front of a south-facing house, with the service rooms beyond, cooler and north-facing (idea for pantries and wine cellars and the like.)

The recently-added front patio in quality limestone is likely to be a favoured spot for new owners as much as it became for the vendors, with seating and dining spaces at either end, with some mature landscaping, and with a feature wisteria by the front door, ready for spring displays.

Behind, the garden is tiered, and stepped with the upper section perfect for a veg and herb garden, suggests Savills’ Mr O’Donovan, and the levels include some feature old stone walls with arches and niches, perhaps left over from an earlier era glasshouse, or perhaps for display statuary or small urns.

There are some out of sight houses to the back, reached off Upper Rose Hill which has its vehicular access point further away towards Sunday’s Well, and a tall, old stone wall divides Rose Hill House from a pedestrian access to Upper Rose Hill.

The 5.7ha grounds of the former St Kevin’s Hospital, Shanakiel are beyond on the west, now in the control of the Land Development Agency and ear-marked for a sizeable new 266-unit homes development and conversion of the period building by the LDA, with a SHD (Strategic Housing Development) application approved by An Bord Pleanala.

The Price Register only shows a handful of house sales above €400k in this section of the Lee Road/Wellington Bridge as so few opportunities come to the open market, and demand in the main comes from medics and academics, given the proximity to UCC and major hospitals like the Bons, CUH and Mercy.

They are all within a walk, as are Apple HQ up the hill above Shanakiel at Hollyhill, employing c 5,000, along with UCC’s main campus and western campus, Mardyke and Environmental Research Lab; also near are the Lee Fields, County Hall, the Kingsley Hotel and the Cork Technology Park on the Model Farm Road, home to many hundreds of jobs.

Sold nearby was the Arts & Crafts gem Athdara, by the Lee Road entrance to Rose Hill which came to market in 2016 with a €520,000 AMV and which made €495,000 while 3 Rose Hill sold in 2015 for €575,000.

VERDICT: City convenience, in a little-glimpsed and tastily renovated period home of size and character.