Go for Gold at Clon's award-winning Glebe House Gardens' peachy €440k

A rural feel to 'cream of the crop' townhouse in top coastal town, from 2010's Irish Developer of the Year Hillback: a winner all around

Fri, 29 Jul, 2022 - 14:04

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports Pictures Niamh Whitty

Clonakilty Town,West Cork
€440,000
Size	121 sq m (1,295 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3/4
Bathrooms	3
BER	B2

BILLED as “the cream of the crop in coastal Clonakilty”, hideaway development Glebe House Gardens is a spot where house No 12 is described as “having the feel of being in the country, but in the middle of the town.”

Those seemingly contradictory descriptions all bear fruit on first visit, now that No 12 is fresh to the summer 2022 market, with strawberries even growing in the communal gardens, as well as many productive fruit trees, generously planted when the scheme off Clon’s Emmet Square started off nearly 15 years ago.

Developers were Bob and Maria Hilliard who had bought the Georgian-era Glebe House in the corner of Emmet Square and later got access to the acre of walled-in back gardens of the glebe for a very special niche scheme that only improves over time.

“Whenever the local authority have had visitors to Clonakilty, they’d bring them to Glebe House Gardens to show off the quality of life that can be had in the town,” observes estate agent Martin Kelleher, who’s now selling this three/four-bed home, with perfect rear aspect and greenery front and back.

Glebe House Garden got nominated for the local authority/municipal LAMA awards back in 2010, along with the Hillards’ other more major mixed-use Waterfront development (with the Whale’s Tail sculpture) on the old GAA club site on the bypass road. Their company Hillback scooped the overall award as LAMA Developer of the Year that year as a result of their Clonakilty portfolio.

No 12 is in the later section, and so is one of the largest houses within, says Martin Kelleher, who guides it at it at €440,000.

At market peak these properties fetched up to €525,000, proving popular with traders-down and relocators; pretty much the same sort of demographic who are once again booking in to view (the scheme is gated, so you can’t just wander past.)

His vendors bought No 12 in 2014, paying a recorded €245,000 eight years ago according to the Price Register, bucking the trend at the times as they bought as a young couple, and are now selling up, as several children (and, au pair) have arrived and it’s understood they are buying elsewhere in the town’s catchment.

Chalk it down: safe, enclosed back garden. Spot the outdor blackboard on the wall?

The selling agent says it’s one of the best townhouses to come along for a while in Clonakilty, and is in still-immaculate condition, in an utterly central and secure setting in lushly-planted and fruitful grounds.

Not only does the front balcony overlook the mature mixed planting, but the south-facing rear is bounded by a high stone original garden wall with private garden grounds on the other side as well, “so you are looking at greenery, front and back, you could be in the countryside,” says Mr Kelleher.

(In fairness, a sea view isn’t remotely possible in the period timepiece that is Emmet Square, home now to the Michael Collins Museum at the far end of a row from Glebe House, and to a Friday farmers’ market.)

Glebe House Garden has pedestrian access to Emmet Square and vehicle access separately 200m to the back with electric gate and AV-controlled access.

Show standard No 12 has a double-aspect ground floor bedroom/home office next to a shower room, and three first floor bedrooms, one en suite, plus upgraded main bathroom with Jacuzzi bath.

Showers are pressurised, heating is oil-fired with thermostatic rads, BER is B2 (so buyers qualify for lower, Green Mortgage rates too), and there’s a Shaker style kitchen. Its next to a living room/dining room with double door access to the enclosed back gardens with landscaping in raised beds behind old rail sleepers and the surface is finished out in high quality Astroturf, hoovered every now and then for clean play or sit-out spaces for its occupants.

VERDICT: show order home, by national award-winning developers in a coastal West Cork town rated as one of the best places to live in Ireland. The selling agent says “as well as relocators, we’re seeing lots of local interest, especially traders down, as Glebe Gardens is so highly-thought of”.