Could this Model Farm Road home be the first in the Hayfield estate to top €1m?
11 Hayfield, Model Farm Road
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Model Farm Road, Cork |
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€1.1m |
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Size |
288 sq m (3100 sq ft incl converted attic) |
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Bedrooms |
5 |
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Bathrooms |
5 |
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BER |
C2 |
COMING from a family with a strong engineering tradition it was perhaps inevitable that the woman of the house in No 11 Hayfield would have her own vision for how things could be done.
She has a clear memory of herself as a four-year-old sitting alongside her engineer father (like his father before him) watching him design and analyse - in a sort of pre-school version of an engineering workshop.
She took the learning from it and carried it with her into adult life, applying it wisely when it came to designing her own dream home. Having studied the architect’s plans for the redbrick Hayfield development on Model Farm Road, she drew up some sketches and presented them to him. He duly obliged, taking on board her modifications at No 11.
“I wanted space to circulate, and that is what I got,” she says.
So instead of a kitchen with adjoining utility, and a bathroom opening into the hall, she had both utility and bathroom moved, into a side extension added onto the far gable wall. She pushed back the stairs, which had the effect of opening up the hallway to better showcase the extra wide staircase.
The changes also created a much bigger kitchen, where double doors were installed to link to the front reception room, and hey presto, the desired space to circulate was created.
It is a fabulous space, made even more so by the sunken lounge, down a couple of steps from the kitchen.
From here, French doors open onto one of two rear patio areas. A second set of patio doors open out to the garden from the main dining area in the kitchen diner.
“It’s just wonderful for parties and at Christmas time. Everything is flung open and interconnected,” the woman of the house says.
She made changes upstairs too, reconfiguring some of the bedrooms. The changes increased the size of her own bedroom so that she could fit a jacuzzi bath in the ensuite and also a steam shower, where a canopy roof can be closed to create a sauna effect. The changed layout also allowed for a walk-in wardrobe.
In all, she reckons they added about 500 sq m to their detached home, which now measures 3,100 sq ft (including the 300 sq ft of converted attic).
Her vision for her home was not limited to design (she has books of sketches, detailing her plans). She’s fearless about colour too – she has an art studio in the converted attic - and chose her personal favourites around the house, with not a trace of ubiquitous, personality-cloaking grey. Purples and blues dominate, with bright yellow throw in for good measure in another downstairs reception room that has been used as a study/home office.
She painted a mural on the back wall of the lounge and recalls the builders watching with interest as floating nymphs emerged.
She remembers being allowed in to paint it before the keys were even officially handed over. She got a headstart on the garden too. She recalls driving around Nangle and Niesen nursery in a jeep and loading up with mature plants “and having everything planted in the garden by March 2004, even though we hadn’t moved in yet at that stage”.
“We had a party after moving in and people couldn’t believe how everything was blooming,” she recalls with a laugh.
The west-facing rear garden is a joy. As well as the main patio, there’s a “secret” patio surrounded by hedging and acers at the bottom corner of the garden, where a huge, wall size mirror makes it look twice the size.
Tall hedging and trees along the back wall guarantee privacy and in-bloom wisteria – several varieties – form an extensive canopy over a pergola.
Gates close off the side entrance so visiting grandchildren are utterly safe.
Outfront is beautifully landscaped too, and again the lady of the house deployed her engineering nous to have the drive reconfigured, so that the front reception room is overlooking lawn and shrubs, while shielded by trees from the main road.
No 11 is one of just over a handful of Hayfield homes on the road that links Model Farm Road to Carrigrohane Road, while the remainder of these Roddy Hogan-designed, Ruden Homes-built properties are set back off the road in the main estate. The woman of the house likes the position of her house as a corner site gave her more space and she is overlooking green fields and the nearby stunning Church of St Peter.
She also adores her home where all the focus is on the practicality of catering for family but feels the time is right for a move.
Norma Healy of Sherry FitzGerald is the agent selling and she has set a guide price of €1.1m. If this is achieved, No 11 will be the first home within the Hayfield development to break the €1m mark. The Property Price Register shows it’s been over a decade since a Hayfield home came close to doing so, when No 26 sold in 2010 for €920,000. However the rumour is that No 2, which went up for sale last year at €890,000, is about to close at around €990,000. It’s a smaller house than No 11 on a smaller site. If No 11 reaches its guide, it will be the talk of Model Farm Road.
Kudos to the woman of the house for nailing a great layout in what is first and foremost a family home. Lots of bold flourishes inside and great garden design, with excellent outdoor entertainment potential.
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