City living at €475k off Cork's Belfield Abbey buy with bells ’n whistles

Boreenmanna Road's Belfield Abbey four-bed comes with some nice surprises, including an en suite with a bath

29 Belfield Abbey has a lovely family and neighbourly feel.

Boreenmanna Road, Cork City
€475,000
Size	147 sq m (1,508 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	B2

THE owners of 29 Belfield Abbey bought here off Cork city’s suburban Boreenmanna Road back in 2014, back when sales of homes in the mid-2000s-initiated development finally got back into full-swing.

They purchased the three-storey, four-bed end-terrace home with what was a so-called ‘builder’s finish,’ and then proceeded to put their own mark on it, and not just in decorative terms.

Maturing front garden at 29 Belfield Abbey

They used the services of Daniel Luxton, a director with Cork design firm Coughlan de Keyser Architects to give them a bit more breathing space in what was to be their main living space, the kitchen/diner to the back of the mid-terraced build.

What they got from his drawings shows clearly you don’t need to add lots of square footage to give a whole different lift to a standard family home layout, possibly not much more than 100 sq ft, but it makes all the difference.

View in rear extension from kitchen

The single-story addition - no more than a small ‘box’ extension, really - creates a dining section off the rear room, which has back garden access facing west, but one also angled at the end section with a corner glazed section to get every last ray of available southerly light also.

It’s very effective, transformative, even, say the young family who’ve loved the brightness and ease of space, but who are now moving on.

They were lucky to be able to pick up a site in the same vicinity they have now lived in for over seven years on which to build from scratch, so they are still near the services, amenities and schools they’ve come to know. As that progresses to completion (it was severely knocked back by Covid, the aim was to have been in by last summer) they’ve now put the immaculate-looking No 29 Belfield Abbey up for sale.

Rooflight above the compact box add-on

It’s listed with estate agents Ann O’Mahony and Stuart O'Grady of Sherry FitzGerald who guides the 1,580 sq ft family home at €475,000, and the good news for home hunters in the first half of 2002 when builders and trades are still at a premium and materials at a price pinnacle (but, starting to drop back to more normal levels) is that it needs absolutely nothing at all done to it, inside or out, and it has some surprises too.

Apart from its general condition is the spread of bedrooms, with two on each of the house’s upper two floors, with bathrooms aplenty.

Each of the mid-level’s bedrooms is en suite, unusually enough. but what’s more unusual again is that one of them, the rear one, has a bath, with shower overhead for a touch of extra luxury: en suite shower rooms almost became a de rigoeur thing in the past 25 years, but ones with proper bath for soapy plunges, and/or baby and child bathtimes with rubber ducks and boats are still a rarity.

The top floor of No 29 has a further shower room shared between the uppermost two bedrooms, so plumbing provision is clearly high.

Then, there’s also a ground floor guest WC, under the stairs in the hall, and next to it is a very discrete but most useful storage space, with ‘push and pop’ opening closet doors.

Sherry Fitz’s Ms O’Mahony predicts a wide cross section of viewing and bidding interest given its layout and condition, as well as its location.

Good sized rear garden with steel shed for storage hidden at the far end

It has gated side access to the enclosed west-facing back garden, where there’s a good-sized steel storage shed with climbing clematis up the front, facing the house. To the front is a small, railed in and planted-up garden with bin storage, and there are two allocated parking spaces just beyond going with No 29.

Belfield Abbey itself was done by O’Flynn Construction around 2007, just as the market peaked, and had a small handful of detached homes which had been expected to sell for as much as €1m back in those frothy days. Those prices never came, however, and the strongest sale of late is the €870,000 paid last year for No 39, which is on the main road, behind a sliding electric gate.

39 Belfield Abbey sold last year for €870,000

That five-bed detached, also finished out to high standard by its vendors (it featured here in June) had carried an €825k AMV via Sherry FitzGerald, as one of the stronger resales not just in Belfield, but along the length of the Boreenmanna Road itself (an early 1900s beauty, Rathcoola, made €950,000 in 2018. Meanwhile, the Price Register shows this home, No 39, selling for €310,000 in 2014, before its owners did the internal finishes, bathrooms, glass add-on to the back, and other investments.

The road just beyond gives very fast access to Skehard Road and Mahon for shops and offices, with very frequent bus service, while the city centre is within a walk in the opposite direction, and there are also several linking roads to Blackrock Road on the city side of Ballintemple for walks.

Immediately on No 29’s doorstep, across the road, is the Ballinlough Community Park and tennis courts, and near also are Páirc Uí Rinn and Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Cork Con RFC, pitch and putt, schools, shops (there’s a Maxol and shop 100 metres away) cafes and a selection of primary schools too.

VERDICT: No 39’s vendors say there’s a lovely family and neighbourly feel within Belfield Abbey - which explains perhaps why they are not moving far at all.