Greening-in jungle at Cork's €895k Aylesbury: I'm a house hunter, get me into here

Impressive selection of plants already taken root at Aylesbury, finds an impressed Tommy Barker Pictures: Ted Murphy

Fri, 18 Nov, 2022 - 00:00

Tommy Barker Pictures Ted Murphy

Ballintemple, Cork City
€895,000
Size	170 sq m (1,820 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	A2

IT’S sort of a cliche that a garden in any new development takes a decade or two to take hold and to impress — but 4 Aylesbury shows that it doesn’t have to be the case. It already has the making an impressive jungle, for any family that wants to put on their own version of ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Into Here’.

Dusk behind 4 Aylesbury: Picture Ted Murphy

The owner of this A2-rated detached home has green fingers for sure, and the evidence is not just in the amount he spent on mature plants to create a back curtain of greenery, and underskirts of massed colour, but it’s in the savvy selection, and their rude, good health, remarkable for planting that only “went to bed” two years ago.

Garden glimpses from 4 Aylesbury's kitchen/diner/family area

He reckons he planted 80 different species — not to mind the many, many pots. To get them off to the best possible start, he brought in 7.5t of quality soil, and already stand-out species include palm trees, Tasmanian tree ferns, bamboos, banana plants, plum trees, echiums, witch hazel, and …well, the list of what’s planted runs to three ruled A4 pages, with proper plant nomenclature for each for those who might need to put a name on a plant face.

To have any garden (and pond) look this good in the latter half of November, after three weeks of rain, is some achievement, not to mind one that has not yet seen three summers.

The garden and house-proud owner regrets the fact he couldn’t get the lawn looking its striped just-cut look, and promises that next spring when life bursts out again there’ll be even more maturity as well as the evidence of the planting of 2,000 spring bulbs, to match the burgeoning blossoms already mentioned.

A love of horticulture is evident: in fact the Irish Examiner also got a garden tour and editorial spread of the same individual’s previous home in Blackrock, a far older property as he sold up and prepared to move to Aylesbury.

Lots of greenery around this Ballintemple/Beaumont location: Cork Con RFC is right next door to Aylesbury

Keen to have an easier keep and easy-to-heat and power newer home, he cannily bought into the brand-new Ayelsbury development in Cork’s Ballintemple three years ago, after it launched in late 2018. Then, over 800 people had queued to view the first showhouse in this seminal Centurion Homes’ suburban Cork City setting, right next door to Cork Constitution and near many open public amenity areas too.

He was one of the first to buy one of only five, largish detacheds up the front of the up-market scheme of 74 homes, in a wide mix that includes two-bed apartments, three-bed duplexes, and four-bed mid- and end-terrace townhouses.

Family area at the back also gets great garden views

The builders, Centurion, are linked to big national developers, /Clarendon Properties, with Cork links via local director Noel Barry, and several (smaller) Kinsale schemes to their credit. Aylesbury was their city calling card, with the 74-unit scheme sort of aping the allure of the Dublin 4 address — Ailesbury — which, along with Shrewsbury, have been the top addresses on the Irish Monopoly board for half a century or more.

It’s no coincidence there’s also a Cork Shrewsbury, just over a back boundary wall too from Cork Constitution’s rugby grounds, just on the city side of Aylesbury, so you pays your money and you takes your choice? New? Old? Cork? Dublin?

The Price Register shows 77 Dublin Ailesbury house sales in excess of €1m in the past decade, with No 73 Ailesbury Road sold at the start of this year for €11.7m. Nothing, though, will ever touch the €47m paid in Celtic Tiger times for Walford on Shrewsbury Road, though… and it still lies undeveloped.

Back in the real world, the selling agent for No 4 Aylesbury is Trish Stokes, and she guides this top Cork listing at €895,000, which on resale over or under this sum will make it the top price in this niche scheme to date. Two to date have made over €700,000: No 1 at €720,000 (the show house), and No 3 at €715,000. This home, No 4, shows in 2019 at €675,000.

Aylesbury (No 4 centre of pic, left) faces an entrance to Beaumont public park

Those purchase prices were for largely finished homes where buyers were given pretty good PC sums for their choice of flooring, kitchens, and paints etc, and it’s probable that most — if not all — of the five purchasers lavished extras sums then on further personal finishes.

In the case of No 4, there was clearly thousands (if not tens of tens of thousands) invested in the gardens, mainly to the back, and in the engineered herringbone flooring and the extensive used of high-quality plantation shutters.

Plantation shutters on every window, including the south facing gable break-out on the stair return

It’s understood the shutters added a cool €15,000 or so alone to the furnishing bill. Highly controllable for minimum/maximum light, or privacy screening, they also swing in for easy cleaning and glass polishing, and they help make and frame the gable wall’s box window, finished on the exterior side in pressed and standing seam metal, zinc in this case.

Just two of the five detached houses have this gable window feature: No 3 and No 4 which face one another across the main, tree-lined Aylesbury central avenue, and they draw light into the stairs return. No 4 must get additional lumens as its one is south-facing.

That core brightness is handy too if the next owners want to have indoor plants, or even a green wall inside....

At No 4, the occupancy is raised a bit out-of-season when a large elephant foot palm is brought in for overwintering. The mature specimen is a prized possession, and it flowers once every 25 years or so.

Naturally, it chose a time when the owner was away and the builders were finishing off the inside to ever-so-briefly flower1 He missed its glory, but as it’s in a pot, he can at least take it away, mind, and cherish it, and hope climate change might hasten its next blooming.

The upstanding, three-storey home is being sold because its owner has a hankering to build from scratch now, having gotten accustomed to the comforts and low running costs of an A-rated build (he thinks it’s nearly too warm, so clearly is no real hot-house flower himself.)

For those being crippled by sky-high home-running bills, now in particular or even before the current energy crisis (the first of many more to come?) look away now. No energy bill yet has gone over €75, and that’s for everything,

electricity, water heating, space heating — the works.

There’s air-to-water heating and a sophisticated heat recovery system giving warmed fresh air among the several tech features that make homes like this so easy to live in. Except for the fact there’s an electric fire in the front reception room, it should have got an A1, reckons No 4’s owner.

For those only just coming to terms with heating technology controls, apps, and other gadgets, take note there’s neighbourly advice readily at hand, thanks to a residents Whatsapp group.

Aylesbury already has its own strong community-focused feel with huge uptake of the WhatsApp messaging group available, so for anyone looking for advice on heating controls, programming lighting, sourcing materials, changing the super-effective Bora brand induction hob’s extract filters or checking up on when the next residents’ clean-up or communal planting... well help is not just on hand, it’s in hand, on a smartphone.

One resident put out a call looking for jump leads after his car battery left him down, and several sets arrived from obliging neighbours in jig-time. Many have car-charging points too, by the way, for the increasing future use of electric cars.

Other examples of sensible engagement for mutual benefit was the decision (spearheaded by No 4’s owner) to have waste collection all contracted out to the one company, so now there’s only one bin collection/emptying day, making for minimal intervention and disruption, no confusion and extra neatness. The terraced homes and apartments even have specially designed, identical containers/screens to hide the unsightly mélange of multi-coloured plastic bins.

The front-facing five detacheds, facing Churchyard Lane and the road outside Cork Constitution didn’t need these wheel-bin hold-alls, however, as they have external side access, gated, to the back gardens to do the screening word for them.

Right on Aylesbury’s doorstep too are the fantastic amenity of Beaumont public park and quarry, with a pitch and putt club by the pedestrian access point. Avonmore Football Club has a pitch inside the park, and the route’s also handy for pedestrian access to the boys’ and girls’ national schools. A child (or, a teacher) living here can be at school within five minutes on foot, and also nearby are Páirc Uí Rinn, Ballintemple village (and Blackrock further afield), Douglas village, and all on a vital spine connecting the city and on out to Mahon and the Cork South Ring Road.

Aylesbury’s design is by Kinsale-based architect Richard Rainey, and the Cygnum timber-framed tall homes are faced in a mellow St Ives Crème Rustica brick, with clay/earth-toned render, all easy on the eye and easy to maintain too, while there’s off-street parking for several cars on cobble drive.

Acers are planted to the right, above lower shrubs and bulbs, screening No 4 from No 5, lining up next to the Cork Constitution RFC, with no passing/entry estate traffic passing either’s door. Two communal green areas are further back within in the scheme, with seating and lighting adding to the ambience, while the standard of finish and maintenance is well above par.

Auctioneer Trish Stokes quotes back Aylesbury’s original sales tag of “Appreciation for Living: A fantastic opportunity to purchase a truly special home in a highly sought-after location”. She says “with No 4 now coming to the market the owner of this home can attest to those promises made.”

Saying that it impresses from the get-go, Ms Stokes notes that the quality is also evident from the get-go, while extra attention to detail is observed by the canny-eyed — in things like the herringbone floor, over several levels at ground and above, which all runs in the same direction (without door saddles), or the immaculate paintwork in Colourtrend ranges that eschew the “everywhere” range of greys in so many homes of the past decade, to come in muted blues to greens, and with ceilings painted the same colour as walls for continuity sake. Also keeping visual continuity, are the plantation shutters throughout, in each and every room.

Rooms in the c 1,820 sq ft house start off with a wide, herringbone-floored hall with side window above the stair return, with the stairs ending in double rails with money-tail turns, and there’s also a cloak room and guest WC.

To the right is a bright, east-facing living room with Evonic-E series flame-effect fire with flooring continuing its unbroken run, and behind is the full width kitchen/dining/family room, with Kube kitchen units with Silestone/quartz tops, carried on up the back wall as a marble-looking splashback. There’s a Quooker instant hot water tap, the hob is very effectively vented with a charcoal filter, and the twin DeDietrich ovens are self-cleaning.

From here, a large, effortless-gliding door opens to the west-facing stone patio and glorious garden, with jasmine already clambering its way up from large pots around the door frame.

Up a carpeted stairs are three first-floor bedrooms — or two plus office — and the main, front east-facing one is en suite, with floor-to-ceiling windows soaking in early-morning sun and holding heat day and night.

The owner made the main bathroom a wet room with large walk-in shower (but a bath is easily reinstated for those who like a soak), and the top floor is a large en suite bedroom, with a wall of built-ins, plus extensive storage in floored, easily accessed eaves spaces, through airtight doors: the lack of draughts in the under-roof spaces is notable.

The view from this top room is out over Cork Con’s playing pitches, a sporting resource which managed to remain in its suburban home after mid-2000s developer focused plans to relocate its grounds to Douglas’s outer hills came to naught.

Greenery in front, city to the west, Marina to the north

Today, the greenery to hand is admirable: “The amount of parks and green spaces in Ballintemple, Ballinlough, and Beaumont is often overlooked,” reckons agent Trish Stokes.

But for this home’s buyers, the most exquisite green space is very literally right on their doorstep, and right in their own backyard, and is only going to get better year-on-year.

VERDICT: Top house and home, topped off by a stunningly selected and planted garden as a private green lung. And, fear not, new owners will be given a gentle guide on what’s planted, here, in an impressive three-page list, spade and homework all done.