Cork semi-d for €585k is 'always better value' with Dunnes Stores link

St Bronach has had an interior overhaul and upgrades in two sets of hands, but never 'went large'

St Bronach 16 Browningstown

Browningstown, Douglas, Cork
€585,000
Size	116 sq m (1,248 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	1
BER	C2

BIGGER isn’t always better, or ever better value. Nor is a multitude of bathrooms, scattered up hill, down dale, and tucked away in eaves, or under a staircase.

Sometimes, simple is good. More than good enough, in the case of St Bronach, a mid 1900s superbly-sited semi-d which has had considerable work done to it, in several ownerships over the past 25 years, and where a long-time owner was one of the Dunne family of Irish and international retail fame.

Sunny family room to the back

Ben and Nora Dunne had an early years family home in Cork’s Browningstown area, starting a family of six, and their 1944-founded Dunnes Stores now, exactly 80 years after, employs c 15,000 across 142 stores in Ireland north and south, the UK and Spain.

Front reception

One of their six offspring, largely out of the public eye for most of her life, named her semi-detached purchase in Browningstown after the Irish female saint St Bronagh (and not St Bernard!) but made very little use of it, over many years.

A Cork/Waterford couple bought – it was the ‘other half’ of the local woman’s childhood Nagle family home Corbally, and they moved, with young daughters, handily next to grandparents after a career move after back to Cork.

Big side site

That career move didn’t last long. They moved after only a few years back to Dublin, and eventually to one of the top jobs in Irish media, but only after they had shaken St Bronach by the scruff, underpinned it with new drains under for peace of mind’s sake, put in double glazing, gas central heating, did internal replastering installed a handmade solid wood kitchen by Leo Lenihan, installed antique fireplaces, and converted the detached garage to a study/playroom.

Main bedroom

All-done up, St Bronach first featured in these pages back in 2003, when it had carried €315,000 AMV via agent Dennis Guerin of Frank V Murphy & Co, and sold for a good deal more (in pre-Price Register price transparency days); its next and still-happily ensconced owners worked in it post-purchase and in two more tranches since, adapting it to their own needs, family growth, tastes, and budgets.

This time around, it’s better again, skilfully extended to the back (at ground level only) and the price tag today is €585,000, quoted by the same selling agent as two decades’ back, Dennis Guerin and recent new FVM recruit Chloe Reidy, who got €555,000 for Corbally next door in 2022.

Set in Browningstown off the main Douglas Road, on a wide corner site with its useful detached converted garage, St Bronach has had one modest-sized (but super-bright, and architect-overseen) perfectly-pitched rear extension added on by its current owners, as well as the attic converted to a multi-use room. The family who’ve colonised it are now departing for a trade-up, detached home in the same Douglas vicinity, on substantial grounds, and, once again, a place that they’ll do work on.

St Bronach has also had an interior overhaul and energy upgrades; has top landscaping of mature planting gently inserted in a covid times project; there’s a new, high-end Siemens kitchen with Gaggenau appliances and pink granite tops which went in in one of the rounds of reinvestments around 2018 and, now, it’s back for sale in the rudest good health for the first time since the early 2000s.

The Cork/Galway-rooted family say they’ve loved every minute here, having seen the younger generation of lads reared to the latter stage of second level education (one a ’24 Leaving Cert) , and high achievements in the sport of rowing, swimming and other water-based activities.

Gym/utility in the detached garage

The adjacent garage which had been a studio/office/playroom for one family has been taken to a new level of fitness by the vendors, with a serious gym in situ, and the room works as a very useful overflow storage room, and also holds the laundry/drying appliances, leaving the house itself in more of a hush as a result.

It weighs in at c 116 sq metres (excluding the attic room, reached via a Stira and the detached garage), or almost 1,250 sq ft today, after a lofty single storey extension was put on in the west-aspected rear some years ago, with a well-glazed roof lantern with pitched glazing in its centre,where the owners worked with architect and design lecturer Dr Marc Ó Riain on the proportions and pitch.

It’s exceptionally bright and is the real family (plus dog) hub, able to accommodate a super-long sofa, under a specially commissioned coastal scene artwork from West Cork and Kerry artist Annabel Langrish, depicting summer holiday scenes of the Fastnet lighthouse, boat and ferries, sharks and more: the art piece is a sort of diptych, in two pieces so each of the sons can have a section in years to come!

Every square inch of every room is immaculately presented, with clever touches too, such as the opaque roller blind on the stairwell window, set down about one quarter way for an unobstructed view out, yet maintaining a high degree of interior privacy.

Two of the three bedrooms are doubles, and one’s a good-sized single. The pristine family bathroom is fully tiled, with a shower over the bath, and this serves the household, as there’s no en suite or guest bathroom, a deliberate decision of the owners not to try to fit in more bathrooms and thus compromise main rooms, or the ground floor, while the decision not to add a two storey extension was also consciously made years back.

As the teenagers approach young adulthood, the family is now in the fortunate position of being able to trade up to more space, with an option in their next project for bedrooms and considerable privacy at both ground and first floor levels.

Selling agents Denis Guerin and Chloe Reidy expect very keen interest given the location, the condition and quality, the corner site and lots of off-street parking at Browningtown’s lower section with a straight run out towards Hettyfield, and for those still with a hankering to further extend, now or in the future, the site allows for it in spades.

There’s proximity to very popular national and secondary schools (Oscar winner Cillian Murphy’s St Anthony’s NS is a walk away,) plus Douglas swimming pool, playing pitches and parks, shops and O’Driscoll’s supermarket and deli, also still in generational family hands, a bit like Dunnes….only local.

VERDICT: A sure-fired seller, with an appeal across the board. Might it attract a trader-down?