You don't have to be a snob to covet Cork's Sundays Well homes. You just need €1.75m...

Nothing was spared in bringing 200-year-old Sundays Well home up to date, including magnificent gardens

Fri, 15 Apr, 2022 - 01:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports

Sundays Well, Cork City
€1.75 million
Size	229 sq m (2,648 sq ft) on c0.6 acre
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	Exempt

It’s likely to be 200 years of age, and Cork’s Hazelhurst — in an imperious setting in the city’s Sundays Well and a one-time townhouse for the Earl of Cork — is up for a change of ownership, in what is undoubtedly its best ever and most comfortable order.

Quintessentially Cork, the Georgian city or town house faces directly south, over a mature wooded section of the River Lee’s north channel, directly over the City Museum in Fitzgerald’s Park and the odd, Diarmuid Gavin-designed riverside seating pod, to the main quadrangle of UCC.

Like the tiered, leafy view it gazes down and out upon, this house has gently, but determinedly, moved with the times. After all, it was built decades before UCC (then Queens College Cork) ever appeared on the southside horizon.

Interior grace, Georgian style, nudged into the 21st century

This private home’s current owners date it to 1804/1807 and, after their fastidious work (most of the house’s mid-level had to be taken out and reinstated, part of a three-year-long works schedule), it feels good as new.

Better than new, even.

Hazelhurst is one-half of the half dozen or so pairs of semi-ds in the central, ‘best seats’ Grand Circle stretch with enormous gardens down to the river on this prime stretch of Leeside running along Sundays Well Road, from the Schloss-like silhouette of St Vincent’s Church towards Wellington Bridge.

It includes a mix of terraces, some fewer detacheds, villas and hideaways, with a few contemporary interjections too, and they are as prized now as in the 19th century and 20th century. Now, well into the 21st century, they could be forgiven for asking not only where did the decades go, so quickly, but the centuries too?

Time flies, indeed.

Italian lighting in the kitchen/dining room with Aga in background

The glorious Hazelhurst last featured in these editorial pages back in 2004, when it was being sold for a family who had had it since 1972, a mere half a century ago, and it had effectively been divided up into three apartments by the time they had decided to sell.

Back in ’04, the Celtic Tiger era was still gathering pace, and Hazelhurst carried a €1.2m AMV (with the recently deceased, veteran estate agent Joe Woodward on the selling case at the time) though what it sold for was in pre-Price Register transparency days, so is unrecorded.

Suffice to say that, whatever it did sell for (c €1m?), that and much more went into it afterwards, with local reports that the grounds and gardens alone saw between €750,000 and €1 million lavished on them…..and, why not?

It’s always the aspect, views, grounds and Lee river link that has made these Sundays Well homes among the city’s most coveted.

Hazelhurst got a 2004 editorial and pictorial spread here under the caveated headline ‘Simply the best... if you’ve cash to spare.’

Around the same time, the even more impressive detached Woodlawn away to the west, nearer the iconic suspension Shakey Bridge, sold at peak times for c €5m, and has had millions more spent on it too, after lower, more chastened times’ resales.

In ’04, in Hazelhurst’s case, we cautioned that it needed further investment. Who’d have seen just how much it would get, and how long it took, to get to this pristine state? Perhaps it was its tired demeanour and additional necessary open chequebook works that saw it linger quite a while on the market before finding brave and committed buyers?

It was eventually bought in 2007, by a family relocating to Cork after years working overseas in some of the world’s leading medical clinics and who came back for a profile consultancy post: various family members were able to walk to school, to college and to work from here.

Now, with family fledged and largely flown, retirement time has come along too. It’s downsizing time today from this 2,650 sq ft home, on magnificent terraced and tiered grounds with off-street parking on two levels, with river frontage to a verdant stretch of the Lee, plus garden room, and multi-use self-contained studio/home office.

That’s all along with professionally landscaped and meticulously minded gardens, done in terraces, and tiers, with a zig-zag gentle gradient path, and with a magnificent reinstated Victorian-style glasshouse/hothouse on a mid-level, with organically well-fed veg and herb beds.

Offering the prospect of an enviable home within a short walk of the city centre and major hospitals as well as UCC, with security, privacy and estate-style grounds, plus work from home possibilities galore, might its next owners fit a similar professional profile to the vendors? Or be in tech? In finance?

It could be anyone, in fact, once they have the funds.

It’s priced today at €1.75 million by agents Sheila O’Flynn and David Donovan of Sherry FitzGerald, and has had very, very considerable amounts spent on bringing it back to rude good health, securing its structure and bulwarking its terraces; then, it’s all been brought up to another level entirely, without bling or flash tricks that might date in ‘mere’ decades.

The good news for the next, fortunate residents is that, once bought, there’s no big spend after that required, it’s in remarkable condition, and presentation, and has been enhanced too in key, important areas.

Everything has been done, done right: nothing was spared.

As it turns out, it wasn’t to be for the faint-hearted: it took a painstaking three years to get this elevated house on elevated luscious grounds to this level of quiet sophistication, driven and directed by leading Cork architect John Hegarty of Fourem. Second-generation architect Hegarty has worked on three or four impressive Sundays Well homes for buyers over the past two decades, with enormous empathy for keeping in character, along with contemporary interjections for 21st-century living.

Hazelhurst might face Cork’s public museum over the Lee, but it’s no museum itself, even if homes all along this whole streetscape pretty much, are protected structures, so alterations all needed to be approved and appropriate, as they have been.

An early-to mid-1900s porch entrance on the southern façade, with overhead balcony, was removed, giving back the clean lines the house would have had, day one or for most of its many, many days (one or two neighbouring homes had similar veranda additions along the way too.)

The current owners decided to do a slate-hung façade to the south (a gable box window at mid-level was slate-hung, and some other

Sundays Well houses have this weather-proofing feature too), in high-quality Bangor slate, and the ‘other half’ of this Georgian pairing went for the same external finish too, making for a lovely complementarity between them: they are quite stand-out when looked up at from over the water, in Fitzgerald’s Park.

You’d have to get up very close, though, to fully appreciate the quality of reinstatement of some of the original features.

New sash windows were ordered to a precise specification by conservation architect John Hegarty. When they were being fitted, it transpired the slender glazing bars were 14mm thick, not the 13mm that would have been original to the craftsmen of the 19th century and he insisted they be replaced – again – with 13mm glazing bars.

They were, and they are things of beauty (especially given the possibilities of other more nebulous ‘replacements’). Glazing bars of 14mm mightn’t have been bad, but they weren’t exactly right. Ouch. Costly. But, correct.

Similarly, other external envelope finishes include smooth lime render to the north façade and three-storey gable, and lime harling also graces the redone original roadside garage and its three, lower-level service rooms/stores, separated by a charming courtyard off the lower level kitchen, with mature Dicksonian tree fern in its middle.

What secures Hazelhurst’s future, and appeal, for future generations, was the re-fashioning of the ‘garage’ (which would of course originally have been a coach house in the Earl of Cork’s days,) and it’s now a multi-use space, gym, studio, teen den or occasional guest quarters.

Now, next to it are simple, unostentatious wooden electric gates which swing in to reveal a parking spot for easy, off-street access/unloading shopping and decanting or small children or truculent teenagers to the property’s rear, day-to-day entry point.

Then, a quite steep paved slope leads down to a lower level, in front of the slated south façade and sit-out sun terrace, with enough parking for several more cars, maybe taking a half a dozen motors, if ever a family needed so many chariots, electric or otherwise, being so close to the city core?

Under this landscaped parking deck (it’s not all about the parking, honestly, but that’s always been the bugbear of resales of some of Sundays Well’s finest homes) the groundworks saw a single, wide garden room created, with a series of draw-back bi-fold glazed hardwood doors opening this year-round sun-trap retreat to the fresh air on fine days.

Access to the lower grounds is fairly easy, as the family wanted an older generation on her visits to be able to enjoy the gardens and riverside as much as they did, so it’s actually quite a gentle amble down, and not-too-arduous a coming back up either, funnily enough.

The flat, lower level has some specimen trees; an early 1900s urn is in centre pride of place, and there’s a large robust timber shed for garden equipment, a ride-on lawnmower and can also taking boating or kayaking equipment.

Boating what?

Turns out, generations of residents of these salubrious, lifestyle city homes have had canoes and small rowing craft for fun and pleasure, on the Lee, able to get up and down to the city - depending on tides, as there’s a weir by Sunday’s Well Tennis and Boating Club on the facing river bank, next to the public park. There’s another weir upriver, where the Lee splits into its two urban-wrapping channels, just beneath the main weir by the Lee Fields.

(Many homes on this glorious stretch have their lower grounds dip underwater temporarily when the ESB releases significant volumes from the dam at Inniscarra. The levels rose in the ill-fated event of 2009, but the gardens are robust and the houses, as ever, remain high, and dry thanks to their elevated setting.)

Victorian glasshouse adds to Hazelhurst's Georgian roots

All of Hazelhurst’s best rooms face due south, overlooking the gardens, river, Fitzgerald’s Park, UCC campus and city panoply, stretching east, south and west (the tall new Crow’s Nest student apartments at Victoria Cross are the latest landmark arrivals to the panorama.)

At lower ground are a high-ceilinged family room, a central hall with original, elegant staircase, and to the right, a dining room by French doors to the sun terrace, and there’s a kitchen linked, just to the back before the sheltered courtyard. There‘s a polished limestone floor, pale green units with marble tops (one section has cupboard doors salvaged from a 1960s home in Blackrock), Aga oven, and a trio of opened-up arched niches (one would have housed a bread oven). Also at this lower level is a large pantry/utility, and guest WC, with a slightly arched ceiling.

The next floor above has the formal drawing room, with an original white marble fireplace, wallpaper by classic designer Jane Churchill and an Irish V’Soske Joyce carpet is underfoot, for hushed movement, while two six-over-six sliding sash windows flood in light from the south, and draw visitors to the view – as engaging by night as by day, with the city all a-twinkle after dark.

There’s a bedroom with en suite bathroom at this mid-level, plus an accommodating hall which has access to the upper parking area, and a link now fashioned to the roadside, screening studio/multi-use room, with pull-down screen for movies, TV and big match days.

Then, above, are three further bedrooms, and three of Hazelhurst’s four bedrooms have their own private bathrooms now, skillfully integrated, unostentatious in appearance, with deft modern design and quality all assured.

In one or two places, skylights have been linked up into the attic level, such as in the main bedroom’s en suite, for stolen light and adept architectural interventions with the considerable conservation-level construction work done to a uniformly high level by Hanratty Builders.

Painstaking isn’t the word for it: remember the 1mm contretemps over the window glazing bars? (not the builder’s fault or burden to carry, fortunately.)

Naturally, Hazelhurst has had a full upgrade of plumbing and electrics along the way; lighting is a mix of classic and contemporary, much of it Italian, and many of the gleaming door locks and fold-flat brass handles (like you’d seen in ships cabins?) were sourced at various antique fairs.

Art abounds, much of it bought at Crawford Art Gallery’s Final Year students’ shows. Pride of place goes to a range of original art, drawings, collages and photography by Cork artist Sophie Gough (Instagram @sophiegough4), who now works and teaches in London.

In itself, Hazelhurst could not be more picture-perfect or, indeed perfectly pitched, as it comes up for sale, and it’s been quite some time since one as good in Sundays Well has come to market.

Sherry FitzGerald had a riverside site appear in these pages last weekend, at €450,000, while five years ago Sherry FitzGerald’s Sheila O’Flynn sold the immaculate, detached Verulam at the foot of Shanakiel hill leading up to Apple HQ for a recorded €1.4 million.

Woodlawn, Sundays Well is a Cork price record holder, at c €5m at market peak

Woodlawn, the record-maker of the boom era at €5 million, last sold in 2016, for a more, eh, ‘reachable’ €2.2 million, was bought by a medic who has reinvested in it, almost incredibly its third significant spend in less than a 25-year period.

Listing Hazelhurst at its €1.75m guide, agent Sheila O’Flynn says it exudes quiet class and elegance, with abundant space inside and outside, behind unassuming electric access gates, and with views over iconic city landmarks which have come into the vista over not one, not two, but three centuries.

VERDICT: did we mention it’s quintessentially Cork?