Smart €535k Cork suburban semi-d easily raised a family, plus  sheep, goldfish, and hens...and a fox

Baltimore Lawn might have a Douglas suburban address, but there's a country background to No 13

Touch of the country to No 13 Baltimore Lawn, aka Realt na Mara. Agent Dennis Guerin  guides the four-bed semi-d at €535k

Baltimore Lawn, Douglas, Cork
€535,000
Size	135 sq m (1,435 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	2
BER	D2

HOUSE for sale with: resident hens in a large and secure run; a visiting fox; a sunken bath for goldfish; a glasshouse and a veg patch, and many happy family memories, which include a pet sheep that lived for a year or two, before ending up on a plate…..possibly at an Easter celebration, garnished with mint from the garden.

1960s elan to Realt na Mara

Oh, and four bedrooms; over 1,400 sq ft as it stands; with adjacent garage, on a south facing big back garden of 0.22 of an acre, and a setting off Cork’s main Douglas Road.

Welcome to this recent market arrival, the classic 1960s design Realt na Mara, or Star of the Sea, in the hideaway cul de sac estate Baltimore Lawn.

The family home of the late John Durcan, a one-time of the Department of Agriculture from Sligo, his wife Angela from Kerry and their four now mature children, solicitor Sean, well-known English Market butcher Tom, school principal Triona and Colette who worked with Department of Social Welfare, is an executor sale, after great accommodating service for the Durcan clan, and some ‘livestock,’ for nigh on 60 years.

The auld triangle: nice plot and south-facing back garden

It’s listed with a €535,000 AMV by estate agent Dennis Guerin of Frank V Murphy & Cork and after just a week on the market it’s under offer, and unsurprisingly heading towards the asking price.

No 13 Baltimore Lawn was a lucky suburban home for a young family to grow up in and roam from, says son Sean Durcan, who moved here aged seven years old from a smaller home on the main road by Baltimore Lawn’s entrance, with his younger siblings.

Graze anatomy: hen run by the productive back garden. The Durcan family had sheep here in the past

“My father saw bulldozers moving on the old O’Sullivan family orchards and said ‘we’re going to buy a house there,” Sean recalls, and they moved in 1965 to the quiet estate of 20 semi-detached houses around a green, twelve three-beds, and eight four-beds, build by Denis J Bradley.

They rarely come for sale, usually only after family rearing is done and dusted, as the location is so good, within a walk of the city centre, or of Douglas village, with long-established schools, parks and playgrounds, pitches, swimming pool, shops and more, and the cul de sac makes them super quiet, almost country-like still.

That must have appealed to John and Angela Durcan who had rural roots, with family holidays baling hay and they also kept sheep in Angela’s native Kerry, near Killarney.

Make hay....

The couple grew fruit and veg here on the over-size triangular garden in a corner of Baltimore Lawn, and visiting Mr Fox comes from a boundary with a detached home on a large neighbouring home en route to Whitethorn just on the city side.

A brush with danger as Baltimore Lawn's Mr Fox checks out the bird feeder

He’s never been able to bother the hens, all of them regular egg layers every day, the family say.

What was a bother was the heron that kept stealing the goldfish from a orthopaedic bath sunken into the back garden (Mrs Durcan developed MS, but through it and both she and John were regular social bridge players at the Lee Bridge Club on South Terrace.)

Canny John got access to a farmer's electric fencer, and the iron grid from the base of a bed which he put over the bath, wired it up, and “there was an unmerciful squawk heard all over the place, the heron rocketed off and the goldfish got fat again.”

To today’s generation, the richly-recalled family memories of a suburban youth will seem strangely quaint, but covid lockdowns have in many cases rekindled the love of sustainable livings which a site like No 13s’ can do, while the ‘inner’ Douglas location is just bullet-proof.

Living/dining room

Able to accommodate extensions up, out to the back or the side, No 13 Realt na Mara is quite the enticing prospect, says auctioneer Dennis Guerin, describing its setting as ‘secluded,’ and offering new occupants “an excellent opportunity to acquire a spacious family home and extend and modernize, to one’s own specification, design and standard.”

It has an oak floored hall, sitting/dining room, with a French door with glazed side panels to the gardens and a patio, a further reception with breakfast room with stove, next to kitchenette to the side.

Kitchenette to the side

 Plus, there’s a home office/playroom, previously used as a ground floor bedroom with adjacent WC/shower room.

Hall

 Above are four bedrooms, one a single, plus bathroom with shower and a linen press.Outside, the front facade has some timber sheeting on the upper level, there’s a cobble lock drive for parking, shrubs and a 250 sq ft garage.

The Price Register shows six resales here since 2011, and the two in the last five years were No 12 making €462,000 in 2020, and No 6 fetching €450,000 in 2018.

VERDICT: Bring your own menagerie, and nest egg, to Baltimore Lawn’s Realt na Mara.....lucky Number 13.