Completing the treble: €825k Glanmire House of the Week has been extended at least three times

Woodleigh began as a bungalow and grew upwards and outwards over the years

Woodleigh, Glanmire. Pictures: John Roche

Glanmire, Cork
€825,000
Size	358 sq m (3,853sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	C3

WELL, there’s be no need for an extension to this family home Woodleigh, in Cork’s Glanmire.

It’s been added to not just once, not just twice, but three times. Or, is it four? Even the family living here, and now leaving, might miss a job or two, given the passage of time, and the scale of changes over almost 50 years.

Originally built as a bungalow back in 1974, Woodleigh is now a 2,800 sq ft four-bed home, on immaculate grounds …..but, for all that’s it’s still not quite keeping up with the neighbour directly across the road.

Facing Woodleigh across the road is the sweeping entrance and gate lodge for the 300 year old Poulnacurra House, built on former grounds of a 12th century Norma (Barry) castle and which hit the market in June, in these pages with a €1.75 m AMV.

Poulnacurra House

The beauty, with a 5,300 sq ft intact period home, gate lodge and courtyard buildings got launched with agents Sherry FitzGerald and is reckoned to have some of the very best gardens of any home in the Cork metropolitan area, after decades of care, and informed planting.

Coincidentally, Poulnacurra’s vendor has been 50 years in situ there, closely enough paralleling the vendors of Woodleigh’s tenure too, while for families looking to trade up in and around Cork city and Glanmire, well, Woodleigh is the earlier home to live up to.

And, it’s ‘only’ half the price.

Woodleigh

While Poulnacurra got launched at €1.75m, with active interest reported in it, Woodleigh comes along this week with a €825,000 AMV quoted by Gillian McDonnell of Sherry FitzGerald, who says her vendors are empty nesters now and are trading down having already bought locally…..so they haven’t been tempted by Poulnacurra!

Woodleigh’s a very smart home, with quality joinery, a marble fireplace features in the hallway with gleaming hardwood stairs, carpeted with brass stair rods, and four reception rooms and ‘just’ four bedrooms.

Reception room

Most notably, there’s a very large main bedroom suite upstairs in what at one stage was a two-story extension to the original bungalow, left of the hall, with wide bow windows at both ground and first floor levels.

Upstairs, in this great-sized bedroom, there’s a sitting space with several sofas by this window, looking out toward the mature trees at Poulnacurra to the right; there’s also room for several large pieces of free-standing furniture, dressing tables and a huge bed, while the private bathroom has jetted bath, shower, bidet and there’s also a sauna too.

Sauna

It's set up in a ‘Jack and Jill’ layout on this upper level, reached through a dressing room from the bedroom and also accessible from the landing so others in the family can use the sauna without going through the bedroom: ah, the luxury of space.

At ground are three other bedrooms, one of them en suite so the home is adaptable for just about every stage of family life, from smallies to larger lumbering offspring while the number of ‘day’ or reception rooms “means you can lose one another for privacy during the day and evening,” observes Sherry Fitz’s MsMcDonnell.

Those rooms (with some internal spilt levels) include a front sitting room, with beamed ceiling (the bedroom directly above also has ceiling beams) and fireplace, a very large kitchen/casual dining room, more formal dining room, a family room with stove, and a back hall/ office leading to a gable end en suite bedroom, as well as large sun room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking over the rear garden and one of the several patios/sit out spots.

Sunroom

Kitchen

And, the gardens? Extensive and immaculate; there’s a half an acre in all, slightly tiered and rising to the back with mature stone boundaries, stone steps up, several sheds for storage and a range of hard-landscaped terraces practically ringing the extensive home, seeming added to at the back and sides, over the years and yet with an ultimate cohesion, and brought together by the one external colour choice and rendered quoin detailing at the corners.

VERDICT: With 3,850 sq ft of well-tended space and half acre of gardens, with lots of parking, a walk down to Glanmire village of Coláiste an Phiarsaigh, and short drive 'over the hill' to Cork city, Woodleigh is as much as any trade-up family might wish for.....unless they have twice the cash to splash on Poulnacurra House across the road, that is.