Suburban home speaks of comfortable family years of enjoyment

Cork's fine Creighton House is in a hot-spot suburban location

Fri, 23 Feb, 2024 - 00:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports Pictures John Roche

Maryborough Hill Douglas
€1.45 million
Size	277 sq m (2,970 sq ft)
Bedrooms	6
Bathrooms	4
BER	D2

IF THE walls of Creighton House could talk, they just might include monologues and dialogues from one of the great writers of the 20th century, Samuel Beckett, who was an occasional house guest in this Douglas, Cork home’s previous ownership.

Dating to the mid-1900s, and extended by previous owners architect Brian Wain and his wife Olga, nee Beckett, who raised a family of seven here, Creighton House is a hideaway, on the edge of ‘old’ Douglas village on the foot of Maryborough Hill.

It's most recently associated with Patrick O'Halloran, a one-time chief financial officer with a major international company and, later with hi wife Ann, well-known in licensed vintners circles, having been proprietors of The Oyster Tavern, and Flannerys on the Glasheen Road.

Creighton House was first built on the considerable Douglas lands once associated with Maryborough House, which predates it, with portions of that great house (now a hotel) dating to the 1730s.

Creighton House, with old lodge on right hand side

Right next door to Creighton House is an original lodge to Maryborough House, gothic in style with distinctive ogee windows: on this home’s other side just a few entrances away is the Fingerpost roundabout, a pivot in more ways than one of old Douglas, yet once inside its grounds, all’s private: it’s quite the location, to be sure, and one that occupants are slow to leave.

Maryborough Hill and lodge in earlier times: Creighton House is now inside the wall on the left

Fresh to an early spring market, Creighton House is listed with agents Ann O’Mahony and Stuart O’Grady of Sherry FitzGerald who guide it at €1.45m, having had a few €1m-plus sales further up Maryborough Hill in recent years and who say the chance to buy a substantial home, on such a private site and such a strong location for easy family living is a rare one indeed.

The current family, with Limerick family roots, have been here for about 25 years. Patrick and Ann moved to Cork in 1992 and became very well known in the city's licensed bar trade, operating very successfully at Market Lane's legendary Oyster Tavern and suburban Flannery's as a husband and wife team, say family members.

The O'Hallorans bought here around 1997 from the Wains who were the second only owners, buying from a family called Beasely who built the first iteration, likely to have been around the 1960s and early 1970s.

Not surprisingly, as an architect Brian Wain put his own stamp on Creighton House: now it’s a substantial detached two-storey home of just under 3,000 sq ft, in a kinked or angled shape, only one room deep in many sections and with up to six bedrooms, including one off a second, gable-end internal staircase that allows one end of the house to be adapted for close to independent use. Adult offspring? Au pair? Granny flat?

Fireplace with copper canopy opens to two rooms

On mature, and walled grounds of c half an acre, the property also includes an older style detached multi-use building with covered car port, with laundry room, bathroom with shower and large, bright wood-panelled room ideal for a gym, games room, home office, treatment room, or office.

This handy room might at one stage have been a design office, and Mr Wain’s practice later became Wain Morehead in 1995 (now headed by John Morehead), based in the old Maryborough House lodge and then in a newer similar scale building alongside.

Detached carport and multi-use room inside

After their own 25 years here, the O’Hallorans are well arrived now at the downsizing period and, having left their own mark, recount many of their own ‘happy days’ and similar gatherings here. In fact, they had considered selling back in 2002 and put it up for sale at that stage, had planned a move back to Limerick but found they missed their home and life here too much.

Main bedroom is dual aspect with walk-in dressing room and has a large en suite bathroom beyond

They ended up cancelling their sale (it had been priced at €700,000 back in 2002, our records show) and moved back in for another couple of decades: “A hard home to leave,” says the vendor today, with mind made up.

Creighton House is 100 metres from The Fingerpost Roundabout, Douglas

On a visit, it’s easy to see why, as it has all the hallmarks of a well-lived in and much enjoyed family home, with real connection and easy flow between the rooms, especially the main reception rooms at ground level.

Here, there’s a double-aspect end den/library next to a living room, which in turn links, to a dining room with a shared open fireplace with robust fire basket between the latter two rooms, an effective way of heating and connecting both spaces.

Separately, there’s a kitchen in the house’s real hearth point, the middle angled bit overlooking the back garden, and this has a door off in the other direction to a more casual dining area next to a small sitting room with feature corner stove.

Then, the quite linear run of end-to-‘endgame’ rooms comes to a far or back hall, with stairs to a bedroom (the sixth) which is not connected to the others in the main run of the house.

Any buyers with live at home adult children or other multi-generations under the one angled roof will find this an absolute boon.

Back up off the main first floor landing are five bedrooms, one is a super sort of size, with double aspect bedroom linking to a good, room-size dressing room and then with a private en suite bathroom off that again.

One of the other four bedrooms off the landing could also be a main suite, especially if a small adjoining bedroom was broken for dressing/bathroom.

That’s the sort of interesting playing with spaces most viewers will be entertaining themselves with (and, most likely, an architect) as good an all as the bones of the house are, it’s now dated and the individual layout just may not suit many other family configurations.

As well as the main, broad ‘V’ shape of the detached residence, there’s an entrance porch with pitched tile roof by the front drive, with part-brick and dash façade, and the angular shape of the house and its mature, creeper clad walls seem to set out an instant welcoming embrace.

Creeper and ivies (as well as a wisteria) continue on the gable and back walls too, with stems as thick as forearms broadening out then into the equivalent of dense facial hair come seasons’ growth, and also perfect for plant growing, or just sun lounging, is a sun room at the back, with sliding door access to the smaller sitting room and casual dining.

There’s plenty of character within, mostly redolent of earlier decades, such as a leaded glass divide in the hall, and a serving hatch with twin doors in the kitchen to the dining room, and ceiling heights are good, extra high in fact in several rooms.

Overall condition is rock solid, and well maintained with as much aesthetic appeal in the mature ground as in the house and it’s possible that some of the trees long predate the house itself, dating back to land ownership times of the previous private family owners at Maryborough House itself.

The address carries as much cachet as any Douglas or Rochestown location, and the Price Register shows a number of €1m-plus sales up and down Maryborough Hill, about a dozen since 2010 and the very latest was Orchard House in Maryborough Orchard, at €1.55m, one of a handful in the ‘orchard’ niche by the hotel of one-off large and luxurious homes on relatively compact sites.

Orchard House Maryborough Orchard sold in the past few months for €1.55 million, while Muir Wood nearby made €2.425m

It was bought by a social media influencer/business person, as was the even larger Muir Wood on a double site within Maryborough Orchard, showing at €2.425m in late 2022 , bought by a young family with a medical/social media ‘influencer’ profile.

Ready to start viewings now, Sherry FitzGerald’s Stuart O’Grady and Ann O’Mahony say this property’s next owners could come from far and wide, or from up or down the road and past the Fingerpost, noting the substantial size, allied to sizeable and super-mature grounds with enormous further scope, yet likely to be reconfigured some bit more at least (Sherry Fitz previously sold a place by Elden, called Karyon Cottage, further up the hill in 2017 for up the hill for €975k and it was demolished) for its next owners decades’ here.

VERDICT: If buying at this price level, do bring an architect with you for future and future-proofing ideas, as it's one of those classic' homes for life.'