Chic townhouse living comes at a nice price in this garden-glorious, €330,000 Cobh home

No 17 Bishop Street is on the market as a sophisticated townhouse after extensive modernisation

17 Bishop's Street, Cobh

Cobh, Cork
€330,000
Size	135 sq m (1,450 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3/4
Bathrooms	3
BER	Pending

BOLD colour, playful patterns and theatrical flourishes are the order of the day at No 17 Bishop Street, a vibrant Cobh townhouse where the owner has a shrewd eye for design.

With a background in graphic design and fine art textiles, Anita Johnston's skills have enriched her home and earned her a living, through her greatislandembroidery.com business, which she founded 16 years ago. Specialising in personalised gifts, her creativity extends to the Japanese art of amigurumi, a type of crochet. The heartbeat of her business is the craft room in her own home, which runs along one side of the hallway. 

This part of the house was once a laneway for horse-drawn carriages, Anita says, while to the rear of their home, in what is now the garden, a stonemason ran his business. Nowadays, that laneway has been supplanted by a busy craft room, a lushly-decorated guest WC and a utility. 

On the opposite side of the hallway, an internal feature window overlooks the kitchen diner, a warm and practical space. As their sitting room is on the first floor, Anita configured the kitchen/dining room so that there's seating area for visitors too, rather than bringing guests upstairs.

A hell of a lot of thought went into turning No 17 into the stylish, terraced townhouse that it is, and a hell of a lot of work too, after Anita and her husband Kyle Johnston, a pilot, bought it in 2017.

17 Bishop Street, Cobh

“We bought it for €150,000 so we came in mortgage free, but it needed a lot of work and modernisation,” she says.

Fortunately, Kyle is as handy on the ground as he is at 33,000 ft, so he did much of the renovation work. He also tackled the garden. Remnants of the stonemason’s business were still in evidence and they had to excavate by hand as they couldn’t get a digger through the house. It was backbreaking work in the sloping garden. The results of their efforts though show it was worth it.

 Immediately outside the rear door of the house, off the back hallway, is a raised wooden deck, with overhead canopy and fairy lights and seating. It’s an inviting spot and where they sit out in the evenings.

Old stone steps lead to the lawn where Kyle’s inspired planting has been transformative. A small circular patio is perfect for lunch as it catches the sun around midday. 

Further up again, at the back of the garden, under a towering stone wall, is a second deck, which Kyle built last summer, to catch the morning sun. 

Behind that towering wall is Coláiste Muire, a mixed secondary school. 

Anita is highly appreciative of her husband’s gardening skills “he basically replanted the whole garden, apart from the fuchsia,” she says, and for sure, there’s much to appreciate, from expertly-chosen plants, shrubs, trees and ornamental grasses to a Japanese-style feature timber bridge. A water feature has been installed too, in a bed of ornamental grasses, ready for an electrician to sort the connection.

No 17 is in a terrace of three storey homes where you could never tell from the roadside that they come with rear gardens. Anyone visiting No 17 will be blown away by what Kyle has achieved.

Indoors is a credit to the owners too. Anita says they work well as a couple because she “has the good ideas and Kyle doesn’t mind implementing them, so it kinda works”.

One of the ideas they had was to replace the open fireplace in the kitchen diner with a solid fuel stove. In order to line the chimney, they had to use a cherry picker and work downwards from the third floor.

“It was the biggest job we did really,” Anita says.

They also replaced windows and some internal doors as well as putting down new flooring throughout. The whole house was repainted, new sanitary ware installed, and the banisters restored.

It’s in ship-shape now, and nicely configured so that Anita and Kyle have their own floor. She moved her two son’s bedrooms to the top floor and turned one of the first floor bedrooms into a sitting room where herself and Kyle enjoy movie nights.

Their bedroom is next door and there’s an office too for Kyle, which new owners might turn into a nursery or continue to use as a home office (a new garden room which they bought last summer could also be a home office, but would need to be insulated). 

The couple has their own bathroom too on the first floor.

Overhead, the two boys have double bedrooms and a bathroom. Both bathrooms are usually roomy and showcase Anita’s obvious interior design flair.

A room off one of the boys’ bedrooms is used as a study.

Having turned No 17 into the quintessential sophisticated townhouse over the past six years, the couple is planning a move to a house with a very large garden where Kyle can once more indulge his passion.

Johanna Murphy of Johanna Murphy & Sons is the agent and as she sold the house to the couple originally, she can appreciate the work that's been done. She's expecting lots of interest from first time buyers and families.

"It will be a popular house, it's so lovely and the garden is stunning. Location-wise, you are so well positioned, within walking distance of schools, train station, bus stop and of course shops".

VERDICT: A townhouse bursting with character and flair with a tremendous back garden. Centrally located.

This article was edited on Sept 20, 2023.