Make yourself at home at Mapleholme - the address will justify the €1.25m asking price

College Road home was built on lands associated with the Jennings family of Brookfield House 

Plum site for Mapleholme, at the corner of Orchard Road and College Road near Cork's UCC. Johnny O'Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald guides at €1.25 million

College Road/Orchard Road, Cork City
€1.25 million
Size	240 sq m (2,570 sq ft)
Bedrooms	6
Bathrooms	2
BER	G

THE private family home Mapleholme has long, long links with its near neighbour on Cork’s College Road, University College Cork: it’s built on lands previously associated with the Jennings family of city merchants, who were extensive landowners in the 19th century, and both much of the UCC campus, and this house, were built on lands they owned.

Make yourself at home at Mapleholme? 

Generations of Jennings had amassed landbanks west of the city both for business and for pleasure, and their interests spanned chemicals and mineral waters. Their name lived well into the 20th century, associated with Jennings Red Lemonade, and tracts of their lands down to the Western Road and out the Model Farm Road spanned orchards and fruit farms.

Orchard Road got its name from the Jennings activities, and the family built the large, yellow brick home Brookfield House in the late 1890s (pic, far right). It transferred to UCC 100 years later in 1998 — for a then-record £3m, 150 years after UCC (or, Queen’s College Cork) was set up on the city side on other Jennings part-owned land.

UCC's medical sciences disciplines are now housed at Brookfield House. Pic Denis Scannell

Brookfield House is now UCC’s Health Science Complex, on c 3.5 acres, and the Brookfield Village and student accommodation campus on 11 acres next to it was developed prior, in the 1990s, by O’Brien & O’Flynn, on 11 acres.

Such land today is worth small fortunes: witness the sale of a large and comfortable house, San Paula on an acre garden on Orchard Road, which sold in 2018 for €1.9m to DOB Developments (associated with the O’Brien family of O’BO’F repute).

San Paula has since been demolished, paving the way for nine detached new builds in a scheme called Ecklinville, named after an old apple variety, and each priced at a cool €1.3m for the picking.

Hall with gong 

And, that in a fairly roundabout, updated historical way is where Mapleholme now enters the picture, as it’s priced on its market launch at €1.25m by Johnny O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald.

A detached five-bed home, on a 0.3-acre corner site at the junction of College Road and Orchard Road, Mapleholme dates to the 1930s, like much of the road’s earlier individual homes, and was owned for a long period in the mid-1900s by a Cork Corporation planner, recalls a member of the family who bought this home in 1980.

Main reception room is double aspect

That was back around the day when both medics and academics would have been relied upon to buy locally and live and work on their doorstep, with the Bon Secours on College Road next to UCC, and the Regional Hospital (now CUH/CUMH) opening out the Wilton Road in 1978. Also popular with the same academic/medic buying duopoly were addresses like Shanakiel and Sunday’s Well, given proximity to other hospitals such as the Mercy.

Some houses, especially those on College Road, were also consulting rooms, but the spread of student numbers thru’ the 1990s and ever since saw many snapped up by investors.

Dining room with bay window

buyer profile of the “good” family houses not diced and sliced for students and/or digs has only shifted a tad since in the last four or five decades, but — anecdotally at least — medical consultants now have the upper hand over their academic staff counterparts at UCC due to higher incomes.

The family who bought Mapleholme in 1980 had, however, a double reason to buy, one being a UCC lecturer, in the Italian department, the other a medical consultant who had worked in the Bons and then moved to CUH. Their children grew up here, went to local schools and UCC - no excuse for missing lectures.

Time flies: Il tempo vola, or tempus fugit as UCC scholars might concede, and 42 happy and productive years after its last market offer, Mapleholme is now an executor sale, as the next generation who called it home are all living and working outside of Cork.

Rock solid feel

It wears its age (nearly 90 years) well, but of course will need updates now. The bones are good: there’s good space, the ceilings are high, the deep, double-height bay windows are the job and there are many lovely features — most engaging of all is the entrance and hallway, with stained glass panels and fine staircase.

There are up to four, or more, reception rooms; two at the front with excellent contrasting fireplaces (one marble, the other timber with a marble insert) both have bay windows and a bell-push for summoning “help” from the kitchen was still functional up until very lately.

Also at ground is the kitchen with simple maple units, a breakfast room, and a TV room/play room/home office to the front.

The family had added a single-storey extension some years ago, so now the overall floor area is a pretty decent 2,570 sq ft, with a west-facing guest bedroom by a shower room at a rear corner, overlooking a section of the very mature garden, with a wide variety for trees keeping faith with its Brookfield origins, including old maples and acers and many more recently planted ones also.

There had been even more grounds with Mapleholme, but a site for a one-off on Orchard Road was sold off in 2003 — a “new” build called Mizen, which is entirely out of sight, over a very secure boundary, while on the eastern side is a charming limestone home owned by ex-medic and former UCC President Michael Murphy (2007-2017).

That 2003 site sale is, possibly, the salvation of Mapleholme as a private family home for future owners. If this property came to market now, with that extra bit of land still undeveloped on Orchard Road, bidders would be competing with UCC and student accommodation providers.

Porch entrance

Now, it’s just up to a family with €1.25m to spend, and hundreds of thousands of euros more to lavish on adding 21st creature comforts, to make it “holme” once more, and next occupants may even seek planning to replace the current entrance on College Road with a quieter one on Orchard Road.

VERDICT: Will there be a doctor in the house?