Little Orchard could be pick of Cork's Model Farm Road summer crop at €1.1m

Hidden city home has Bauhaus references, great rooms and happy memories 

Harvest home: a plum property at Little Orchard,  Farranlea Park, guiding €1.1m via estate agent Brian Olden of Cohalan Downing

Farranlea Park, Model Farm Road, Cork
€1.1 million
Size	183 sq m (1,937 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	E1

IT’S easy to see how a couple, with a then-young family, fell for the charms of hideaway home Little Orchard: it’s just a peach of a setting.

High ceiling interiors and quality, original early to mid-1900s finishes

This distinctive-looking, early- to mid-1900s one-off home, built on the productive and fertile grounds of a former market garden and orchard, is located off Cork’s Model Farm Road and Farranlea Park.

Here, there’s a leafy road called The Orchard, linking Farranlea Park and Farranlea Road via Farranlea Grove — all covetable western suburban locations for Corkonians. But blink and you’ll miss the tiled nameplate for Little Orchard, up an uber-discrete, hedge-lined private approach avenue serving just three homes, of which this is the senior partner.

Private grounds at hidden Little Orchard 

Just like one of the owners, in fact.

Little Orchard was the family home of the late Jim O’Sullivan, a Cork native who’d risen to become a senior partner at PwC, and a President of the Institute of Taxation, along with his wife, Rowena, nee Dunne, from Moylough, Co Galway, who embraced her ‘orchard’ gardens here with evident gusto, and green fingers.

The couple had met in Dublin, after Jim left the North Mon and both had gone to ‘the capital’ to work with the Revenue Commissioners.

James O’Sullivan, or Jim, later moved to Cork with accountancy firm PwC. His partner in life, Rowena, was affected by the civil service’s marriage ban, but put her own expertise to work in a number of new roles, including in the early formative days of Cork's vital Citizens Advice Bureau, now the Citizens Information Bureau.

Bright reception room

They first moved to Halldene, with four of their five children in hand, loving the sociability of the city's western 'burbs, but later, in the 1980s, took their own good ‘advice’ and snapped up Little Orchard.

It’s an imposingly tall, robustly-built, and comfortable family home, just shy of 1,950 sq ft, with up to five bedrooms, seemingly larger inside than its external ‘envelope’ might suggest, as it has notably extra-high ceilings, creating an airy home of character and warmth, on the most private of mature gardens, on c 0.3 of an acre.

Green fingered grounds

Five O’Sullivan children grew up here with the easiest and most enviable of commutes, to local primary and secondary schools on and off the Model Farm Road almost on the doorstep — and the home continued to earn its keep into the college-going years too.

Today, both the vastly expanded MTU and UCC third-level campuses are within an easy walk, as are major employers such as the CUH/CMUH and Bon Secours as well  as the Model Farm Road Technology Park and Cork County Hall.

One of the two fine reception rooms, with notably high ceilings

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Superbly-set Little Orchard only comes to market this summer after the passing of Rowena O’Sullivan, predeceased by her husband Jim in 2021. It’s for sale with estate agent Brian Olden of Cohalan Downing who says: “It’s a family home of truly real quality, there isn’t a poor room in it, and the location is highly desirable.”

Entrance to Little Orchard along  Farranlea Road: the house itself is out of sight at the very end

 He guides the well-kept hidden home at €1.1m, a price point far from unknown on and off the Model Farm Road, with the Price Register showing 20+ deals over this sum, with a few of them more likely to be ‘commercial’ purchases, rather than pure residential ... as Little Orchard most assuredly is.

Kitchen

It’s handily toward the back of its 0.3 acre site (Farranlea Grove homes are out of sight to the rear) with most of its grounds to the front, to the south, and screened by tall trees, interspersed with flower and shrub beds, bowers, and rose beds.

There are ‘secret passages’ in the gardens, and a section by the approach avenue previously produced every sort of fruit, berries, salads, and vegetables: forget your ‘farm to fork’, it was more from garden to gut, easy pickings, the now-adult offspring, and grandchildren recall with a touch of wistful nostalgia at the closing of this life chapter.

(There’s a lapsed planning for a dwelling here, a long-term future/pension option too for next fortunate occupants?)

Main bedroom

Cohalan Downing’s Brian Olden knows he’ll have medics aplenty here (a detached 1940s home on 0.55 acre on nearby Bishoptown Avenue, Small Acre has just gone ‘sale agreed’ well over its €1.55m guide), but not exclusively so.

Smallacre on Bishopstown Avenue is sale agreed at over €1.5m

Those who’ll buy will factor in an additional spend, most likely an architect-driven extension which can take design references from its original design, almost Bauhaus-style.

Little Orchard

Little Orchard is flat roofed, but it’s so tall and the eaves are quite deep, so its roof-crowning novelty only dawns slowly, and extension options are primarily to the eastern gable end, and south-aspected front, with lower-tier garden.

VERDICT: a rare prize, well-spotted by the last family that jumped to its attractions.