Pretty in Pink, Sunday's Well home has million euro views  

All jazzed up and ready to go, The Inglenook knows how to work a room 

The Inglenook, Sunday's Well

Sunday’s Well, Cork city
€1.15m
Size	261 sq m / 2,809 sq ft
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	E1

IN broad terms, here’s what’s happened to The Inglenook over the past two decades: potting sheds made way for a kitchen/dining room, a drab back yard was incorporated into the main house, and overall, it gained about 800 sq ft.

There was plenty more finessing besides, none of which detracts from the elegance of a 100-year-old home that has the gift of overlooking several iconic landmarks: the rejuvenated “Shakey” Bridge, the green leafy elms of the Mardyke, UCC’s sports’ arena, resplendent Fitzgerald’s Park. It’s all there, sport and play, right on the banks.

The Inglenook, Sunday's Well, with the Shakey Bridge in the foreground

When the current owners first spotted The Inglenook on the front page of the Irish Examiner’s Property back in the year 2000, they immediately set up a viewing.

"The picture on the newspaper was taken from the Shakey Bridge and it was a very different looking house. 

But I remember walking through the door off Sunday’s Well Road and just seeing a wall of green. That sold us. The gardens and the view, before we even got to the house,” the owner says.

And then of course the location - given it was bought by two medics - a quick zipline as the crow flies to the Bon Secours Hospital and a nice walk or cycle to Cork University Hospital.

To ring the changes, they brought in a draftswoman friend and a West Cork builder they knew from time spent in West Cork.

The alterations made are not unlike what our own writer suggested when he wrote about the sale of The Inglewood in Property in 2000.

His suggestion that the potting sheds, beneath the broad terrace that runs right across the front of the house, be glassed in and made into a sun-filled feature, came to pass.

He was also of the opinion that the nooks and crannies around a bit of open yard to the rear could be put to better use via “an intelligent modern conversion which would draw in needed light and make the most of the space available”. This too came to pass.

The potting sheds are well gone and the replacement “sun-filled feature” is a magnificent, modern kitchen/dining room with a superb river-facing, glazed, bow-shaped wall, with three separate sets of double doors opening onto a south facing patio and on towards the garden.

“It’s where we spent so much of our time, the kids tumbling out through the double doors into the garden,” the owner says, adding that the use of cast iron railings in strategic locations around the garden kept them safe from the river.

It was their favourite part of the house, where they more or less lived the Christmas they moved in, while the builder and his two sons were still finishing off sections overhead.

As regards the small yard and the nooks and crannies, great creativity came to play and what was once outdoor is now indoor, a light-filled back hallway, roofed in by a multi-pane skylight, and overlooked by a small mezzanine off a rear bedroom, with a very generous shower room/guest WC tucked beneath.

As this hallway runs along what was the rear exterior wall of The Inglenook, it encloses a stunning, original, arched, colour glass window, more noticeable internally on the return of the stairs, backlit by the bright light from the corridor.

Also in this back hallway area is the original “utility”, with a fabulous, well-worn original “housemaid’s sink” and there’s an entrance door and reception area too, an alternate to the more imposing official front door, terrace-facing, with spoked fanlight, which, under the current owners, replaced an unattractive and inappropriate sliding door.

If you enter three-level The Inglenook via the front terrace, you come into a wide, bright, high ceilinged hallway, with recently re-cleaned tiles, and an impressive, original, solid oak staircase.

 

There’s a nice bit of original oak in the house, evident in the downstairs doors and architraves. There’s one or two original fireplaces in upstairs bedrooms and a magnificent cast iron bath in the main bathroom, with some splendid brass fittings, most notably an antique and hefty brass bath plug, which the current owner says came from an aunt’s house in Montenotte.

Over the cast iron bath is a lovely, pop-up lantern light, ensuring a fine, bright bathroom, which comes with double sinks, a shower and some clever, concealed storage.

Off the bathroom, on the landing, is a linen closet, and a large, well-organised walk-in wardrobe.

There are four bedrooms, all with original timber floors, of which the main has the same dazzling bow as the room below, overlooking those sublime views. 

Just one bedroom, the only single, is to the rear. By way of compensation, it opens onto that rear mezzanine. A private and unique study area?

There’s also a “study” downstairs, off a library, through double doors, although the owner says they tended to use this study more as a second dining room.

The word “snug” springs to mind in the library, which shares a two-sided fireplace with the “study” and has a handsome window framed by heavy drapes overlooking the set of steps that lead from the road above down to the house.

Wisteria, more than 20 years old, frames the exterior and when the lamp is lit inside the window at night time, it’s quite delightful, says selling agent Michael O’Donovan of Savills.

“It’s very quiet here too, you never hear noise from the road above,” he says.

Across the hallway is the main reception room, another striking space with French doors to the terrace.

To the rear of the reception room, behind the main staircase, steps lead down past a WC and pantry to the kitchen/diner which has what looks like a new floor but is in fact old, reclaimed wood.

Bifold doors at the top of three broad timber steps can close this large room off from the rest of the house. Throwing open the triplicate of French doors on the opposite wall creates a gorgeous indoor-outdoor space, in the manner of the old, open-to-the-elements potting sheds, but with far more glamour and no stork tools or makeshift potting tables.

So what else has changed in 20 years? Not the knockout views (river, playground on doorstep, famous bridge, all in place, although the Bon Secours new radiotherapy unit has entered the frame); not the lovely old stone entrance from Sunday’s Well Road where The Inglenook name remains; not the garage, it’s still there, opening onto Sunday’s Well Road, touted as a IR£50,000 (c€63k) individual mews possibility in 2000, now with space for one car and a shower room to the rear and a versatile space with skylights/mezzanine floor overhead.

The price of course has changed - Mr O’Donovan is guiding at €1.15m, compared to IR£500,000 in 2000 (c€635k), but there’s a lot of water under Daly’s Shakey Bridge since then in terms of investment. Where it once measured 2,000 sq ft, it now measures 2,809 sq ft, not counting the circa 600 sq ft garage. It’s been rewired and replumbed and there’s one less bedroom, but more bathrooms, and a far greater share of modern conveniences, including the installation of zoned heating (only some rooms had heating in 2000).

The lovely fundamentals are the same though, since it was built in 1920 for a member of the Guy family, well-known Cork printers with a long association with Sunday’s Well. As the Buildings of Ireland database notes, The Inglenook is “a fine house..that makes a diverse addition to the architectural heritage of the area...deliberately turned with the front of the building facing southwards over the River Lee”.

Like its neighbours, it’s behind a blank wall, “allowing for privacy to the streetfront and creating a sense of exclusion from the outside world for the residents within”.

Built in what was probably once part of the garden of neighbouring Mount Vernon, 68 Sunday’s Well, also owned by the Guy family, it looks like the end house in a terrace of three. The giveaway is that it’s No 68A (its much older neighbours in the terrace are Nos 69 and 70). But while it was a later add-on, it’s just as striking. It’s arrival to market represents a relatively rare opportunity to buy into Sunday’s Well Road as these particular homes tend to be prized by successive generations of families.

The most recent sale on the road was in May, according to the Property Price Register, of No 71 Sunday’s Well Road, The Hollies, a 4,000 sq ft period home in need of an upgrade, which sold for €800,000.

Mr O’Donovan, who is joint agent with Charles McCarthy Estate Agents, says The Inglenook is “ideally situated” for anyone looking for a beautiful period home in the city. Its proximity to hospitals and to UCC will make it attractive - as these houses are - to medics and university professors.

VERDICT: The Inglenook has not been compromised by upgrades. An elegant period home, it's fully fit for contemporary living. Ideal for family. In a stellar location.

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