€1.2m Rosevalley House on the 'right' side of Cork's Rochestown Road

Detached Rosevalley House was built on the 'right' side of the road.....on just about the last site 'left'

Sat, 16 Mar, 2024 - 17:58

Catherine Shanahan reports

Rochestown Road, Cork city
€1.2 million
Size	230 sq m (2,475 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	C3

RUBBERNECKING motorists trying to peer past the high walls and gates of homes along the Rochestown Road are straining mainly to the right side, not because there’s a ‘wrong’ side, but because there’s more to look at.

Right you are? Rosevalley House is on the Rochestown Road between Douglas village and the St Patrick's Church, near two hotels and the south city ring road. Agent Stephen O'Donoghue of REA O'Donoghue Clarke guides at €1.2 millon

While there’s a fair few housing estates on the left coming via Douglas, the ‘right’ side is more gilded. Large, detached one-offs are very much in evidence, many of them built in the 1970s, when they laid the foundations, literally, for Rochestown Road’s reputation as one of Cork City’s more desirable enclaves.

Rosevalley House, featured here, was built in the mid-80s and the woman who grew up there says her family was lucky to acquire the last site on the road. Her parents had always loved the location, and eventually bought a site, carrying out the build some years later.

“We moved in in the 80s and there was great excitement,” she says.

At 230 sq m (almost 2,500sq ft), it was a fine family home, with five bedrooms and a couple of reception rooms. Later, it became the epicentre of Holy Communion celebrations for the grandchildren, with plenty of room for everyone in the L-shaped kitchen/dining room and in two reception rooms, one measuring 8m x 4.2m.

“There was just a lovely warm atmosphere in the house, it was a happy house,” the owners’ daughter says.

Her parents took great care of it, she says, adding that the French polishing of doors, architraves and skirting boards has stood the test of time. There’s a graceful staircase with some attractive curves and a balcony to the front of the house. While Rosevalley is in good condition, modernising is on the cards, but from a solid starting point, as it’s a bright, airy home, with scope to extend even further by incorporating a 26 sq m attached garage.

Outdoors is promising too with a good selection of mature trees and shrubbery and a nice bit of lawn front and back, where there’s a curvy rear patio with a couple of seating areas. The back garden is south-facing and enclosed by hedging and trees. The vendor says her parents deliberately kept it low maintenance, doing most of their plant-growing in pots.

“They were good at keeping it an easy garden to manage,” she notes of the 0.25 acre site.

Selling Rosevalley House is Stephen Clarke of REA O’Donoghue & Clarke, and he has form on Rochestown Road, having sold the house next door, Hunter’s Moon, for just under €600,000 in 2018.

Hunter’s Moon had been unlived in for a period, though partly used as treatment rooms, and when it featured in these pages, it came with the caveat that it needed work and current appearances suggest there’s been a fair bit of investment since. Rosevalley House comes to market in pretty good shape, with a price tag of €1.2m. Mr Clarke says it’s “very much an upmarket home” and expects families trading up to a second or third home among potential buyers.

“It’s in one of the city’s most sought-after suburbs, just 1km from Douglas village, and it’s a super property that retains all of its original appeal,” Mr Clarke says.