€325,000 period home with glorious garden will excite first time buyers
17 Bridget Street, Fermoy
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Fermoy, Co Cork |
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€325,000 |
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Size |
181 sq m (1948 sq ft) |
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Bedrooms |
4 |
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Bathrooms |
3 |
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BER |
C3 |
THERE'S a sort of Rogers and Hammerstein moment in the treasury of memories that Vanessa McCarthy will ferry with her when she leaves her home of 30 years. She recalls looking out a rear window in the wee hours of the morning at the height of Debs season, only to see a young couple waltzing around the patio.
“It’s one of my favourite memories, of seeing those two young people, friends of my sons, waltzing away. It was that kind of house. We were right in the town and we had three sons, so their friends were over all the time,” Vanessa says.
The convenience is what drew Vanessa and Charley McCarthy to 17 Bridget Street, north of Fermoy town. They started married life in Castlelyons, restoring a derelict thatched cottage in the countryside, which was all fine and dandy until the kids began to need a chauffeur.
“I was driving them into Fermoy for everything – art classes (Vanessa’s late father was the artist Leslie Curtis), swimming, rugby, you name it. It was a 90 mile round trip. I remember coming home one day and thinking ‘This is ridiculous, we don’t need to be living out here, we’re not farmers’,” Vanessa says.
After viewing several sites on the outskirts of Fermoy, they decided to settle in the town, where everything was within walking distance.
“So we bought No 17 Bridget Street, which was derelict, and we set about restoring it,” Vanessa says.
They did this with aplomb, retaining graceful period features but also making sure not to retreat into a time capsule.
An extension to the rear is a contemporary, light filled space, with a glazed back wall overlooking the tiered and handsomely landscaped back garden, the work of Charley who used cut stone from a derelict shed to build terraces.
The south-facing 0.13 acre plot is a joy, with lawn broken up by patio and raised beds and other hard landscaping.
An open plan seated area with overhang roof faces west and wildlife and birdlife are plentiful. It's a good size garden for a home in town.
An entrance to the side of the house was big enough to park up a six berth motorhome.
No 17 Bridget Street,a four-bed, end-of-terrace home, is in rude health and even though it dates back to the 1890s, it has a pretty respectable C3 energy rating, thanks to substantial insulation work about 10 years ago. The layout has been greatly improved too. The house was an army house – Fermoy was a garrison town, with British troops stationed there for well over a century - and Vanessa believes the army medic lived at their home. It appears his family lived at the front of the house, while the kitchen and servants’ quarters were in a return to the rear. That original kitchen is now the family kitchen, open to a snug.
Through a wide arch is the light-filled dining room/lounge area and double doors lead from here to a front living room.
Across the hallway is the study/home office and behind it, the utility room.
Under the stairs is a guest WC and there are two more bathrooms, one on the return, where there is also a bedroom, and another on floor two, an ensuite off the main bedroom.
The house is a fine size, c1950 sq ft and the attic is floored, reached via stira. It will be a wrench to sell-up, but it’s time to downsize.
The three sons have grown up and moved on, albeit one followed in his parents’ footsteps, buying a derelict Georgian house opposite the park in Fermoy, which he has now restored.
“We’d have strong feelings about contributing to the heritage of the town,” says Vanessa.
While the son worked on his restoration project, he stayed in a three-bed house his parents built many years ago at the bottom of their L-shaped garden. It is to this house his parents now plan to retire, having rented it out for a good number of years, in between lending it to family. They’ll still have a nice bit of garden, over a fence from whoever the new neighbours are, and Charley, a woodturner and member of the Blackwater Valley Makers, an artisan collective, will still have his workshop. They’ll have a separate entrance too. New home and reduced garden will be more manageable and easier to lock up and leave when they travel to visit their other two sons in the USA.
“We’ve had some great times, some really memorable family occasions, but part of us feels it is time to pass on the baton, so that a new family can enjoy it as much as we have,” says Vanessa.
No 17 Bridget Street is ideally located for a family: rugby club next door, and a straight walk through to the soccer pitch.
“What’s more you’re on the M8 motorway in five to 10 minutes, and you can get to Limerick in an hour, Waterford in half an hour and Dublin in two hours,” Vanessa says.
Selling their home is auctioneer Paul O’Driscoll who coincidentally sold the house to the McCarthys all those years ago.
“I’m delighted they came back to the same agent that sold it to them,” he says. The guide price is €325,000, which should be music to the ears of first time buyers.
“It’s where the interest is coming from, young couples, or families looking to relocate to the locality,” Mr O’Driscoll says.
Expect a queue of first time buyers for a house of character and quality with a glorious back garden.
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