Galway move won't see couple's 2021 Cork 'home for life' buy go west

1990s city home sold off-market last year for €1.1m, and got swift upgrades. Now, it's unexpectedly back for sale, priced from €1.2m

No 8 Robin Hill sold off-market last year: now's your chance to buy on the open market. Sherry Fitz's Johnny O'Flynn now guides at €1.2m

College Road/Magazine Road, Cork City
€1.2 million
Size	284 sq m (3,050 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	4
BER	B2

YOU could be forgiven for missing a trick when this hidden suburban home called 8 Robin Hill was last for sale, just a year ago. It was an off-market offer, and sold promptly and handily, making €1.1m according to the Property Price Register.

The sale was recorded in November, and the new owners who bought the c 1995-built large home family immediately started doing their own personalising touches, most notably improving its energy efficiency.

Rear view of tiered back garden

“It was to be our ‘forever home’,” says one of the couple who bought, now with three children as their third arrived after they started nest building in earnest at little-known Robin Hill Avenue.

So much for plans.

Fresh, open and airy inside

A job offer just too good to miss came up, unexpectedly, in the woman’s native Galway, in her medical consultancy specialist sphere. Her partner, an IT software specialist, has easily transferrable skills, being able to work remotely anywhere and so, the young family are upping sticks, off to the west of Ireland, and to another city-living prospect with longer-term potential as it’s where she has her own family as back-up for child-rearing days ahead.

Angular rear corner extension done by architect Bertie Pope

So, now, here’s the chance to buy, once more, if you weren’t “tipped off” about No 8 being, eh, quietly available a year or so back along.

Back with the selling brief once more is Johnny O’Flynn, a director with Sherry FitzGerald and he guides No 8 this time at €1.2m.

Going green

If you have to get a mortgage towards it, take some heart, though, you’ll get a better “green” rate now from most banks as this near-30-year-old detached home today has a B2 BER, and thus it qualifies for a slightly better, discounted lending rate.

Light gets into the extended kitchen

In their short but busy tenure here, considerably less than a year, the couple significantly improved insulation, doing cavity and attic insulation upgrades; they added PV solar panels for energy generating with battery power storage, and they also put in a Zappi car charger with solar connectivity…all you might need is a Sunbeam car to go with it all.

The heating is gas-fired, there’s CCTV and mains services, and the PV panels have been mounted on both roof directions east and west.

The detached home had already been extended by its previous, long-time owners who owned a city business: they’d bought here back in the mid-1990s, when just five houses of similar style were built, just off the eastern confluence of Cork City’s College Road and Magazine Road.

Cul de sac Robin Hill Avenue is super-quiet

The row isn’t widely known, tucked away off the small roundabout here by Bendemeer and Linaro Avenue: this is where the headline-making A1-rated Linaro House sold over a year ago, for €1.35m, while over the road, 200m distant, the A2-rated modern build c 3,300 sq ft 1 Millfield, College Road House sold in 2020 for €1.5m.

Both Linaro House and 1 Millfield were recent builds, in contrast to the more traditional-rooted 8 Robin Hill, whose vague front-facade Tudor look is contrasted now with a modern, peaky rear extension (zine roof) and kitchen wing added for its previous owners, to an angular design by architect Bertie Pope.

It has a handful of other similar-era neighbours on the avenue, (plus some earlier builds): No 8 Robin Hill Avenue vendors’ youngsters appear cherished as, literally, the new kids on the block: there’s dismay along the line that the youthful burst of energy is already and unexpectedly being uprooted.

Will the swings and play area get uprooted too? Or, will the next to arrive here also have children in tow, and seek to have it remain as a “fixture and fitting”? All may be revealed soon enough.

The house, with just over 3,000 sq ft, faces west to the back, overlooking rugby pitches/playing fields used by Presentation Brothers College secondary school behind the Wilton Road and just off Dennehys Cross.

View west to the rear of 8 Robin Hill Avenue

The location puts UCC, the CUH and Bon Secours all within a short walk. In fact, UCC also has a park and ride here for its campus, but “park and walk” might be more accurate a description as it’s so close.

Also close are several schools, while there’s a new pedestrian walk along the back/western boundary of Robin Hill Avenue/Linaro Avenue and Bendemeer park leading to the Glasheen Road.

Johnny O’Flynn says No 8’s beautifully presented, in excellent refreshed condition throughout. It is spacious and bright, and easy to run, with very good, tiered private back gardens, with a very useful, wide, covered side passage to the right between the paved front drive and back garden and patio.

Handy cover side passage, ideal for bikes, buggies for golf or for infants, or mundane, domestic tasks such as clothes drying, natually, and low-energy

Bone dry, this indoor/outdoor wing is perfect for bikes, sports gear, pets, storing garden furniture, the works. And, as it links to the side/utility room, no better place for drying clothes, en plein air; energy efficient and healthy.

Accommodation includes five first-floor bedrooms and the main updated family bathroom around a U-shaped landing with panel-effect wainscot walls, all recently painted, two have en suite bathrooms and the main bedroom now has feature wood paneling painted the same dark green as the back/bedhead wall.

Main en suite bedroom

At ground is the spacious entrance hall, also with lower wainscot panel, a contrasting shade to the upper wall section. There’s a living room with fireplace, a family room with fireplace with stove, and contemporary kitchen/living/dining with part vaulted ceiling, island, integrated stove, and skylights.

There’s also a study/home office, capacious utility, and a long west-facing sunroom, with three overhead Veluxes in the sloped ceiling, plus four large picture windows overlooking the back patio and two lower landscaped garden tiers with lawns behind, buttressed by vertically set old rail sleepers.

To the front, No 8 has off-street parking on a brick-paved drive, with gated side access to the covered side passage and Zappi car charge point, while the replacement double-glazed windows are in a dark colour, reflecting their quite recent installation: might the 90s “originals” have been fake lattice-effect to go with the Tudor “timber” outlines on the façade top half, above the lower brick skirt?

VERDICT: Even though it’s only nearly 30 years old, No 8 has already moved to catch up with the 21st century times.