Doctor's house, in fine fettle, is on the market in Macroom for €625,000  

Three generations of doctors have lived at lovely Mountain View on Chapel Hill

Mountain View

Macroom, Co Cork
€625,000
Size	285 sq m (3060 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	D1

BACK in the day when GP out-of-hours co-ops were still light years away and when the gold standard for a good family doctor was knowing your patients’ details as intimately as the Hippocratic Oath, the Cronin family home in Macroom often doubled as a weekend surgery.

It was to Mountain View, on Chapel Hill, off Macroom’s Main Street, that patients repaired when the downtown surgery was closed.

In a rural town, everyone knew where the doctor lived: Farmers that came off tractors, kids who fell out of trees, housewives in labour. Everyone knew too that you could rely on him in a crisis, any hour of the day or night, because being a GP in a rural community meant you were always on-call. The notion of access only to a rotating locum with no continuity of care was unthinkable.

The Cronin household was as busy on Saturday and Sunday as the downtown surgery was any day of the week.

“People would call to the house all of the time, the doorbell and phone never stopped going,” says the current owner of Mountain View, Peter Cronin, also a GP, like his father Michael.

“My mum would spend the weekend answering phonecalls and we couldn’t go anywhere.

“People came at night and at weekends. There were even some babies delivered there,” Peter Junior says.

Fortunately, the house had a generous glass porch which doubled as an out-of-hours waiting room.

 Patients would wait there while the doctor worked his way through the list in a room just inside the hall, shielded from prying eyes by a thick curtain. It doubled as a stage curtain at Christmas time, while the makeshift surgery became a theatre, where the Cronin kids put on Christmas concerts. Nowadays the curtain is gone and this bright reception room is open to the hallway via an arch.

The porch has been redone since its days as a waiting room. It was stripped back to the walls and replastered and new glazing put in. A lovely apex window ensure excellent light levels. The porch refresh has not changed its character – it's very much in keeping with the period feel of the house.

Mountain View dates to the early 1900s and while it has the look of a parochial house (enhanced by lancet windows) and is up the hill from a church, its ownership has always been secular. 

The current owner recalls that his grandparents, Tim and Margaret Cronin, bought it in the 1940s from a family of the name Foley. Prior to that Tim and Margaret lived over their shoe/drapery store, TM Cronin’s, on Main Street, still trading at Nos 15/16. Their son Peter’s GP surgery was adjacent to the shop.

Michael, late father of the current incumbent of Mountain View, built a bungalow in the grounds of the family home in the early 1950s. When his parents passed away some years later, he moved into the main house.

A graceful property with some lovely old features including original black slate fireplaces with antique tiles, high ceilings, archways, original plaster coving and an encaustic tile hallway, Mountain View was generous home to begin with but grew even more over the years.

 About 20 years ago, a sunroom was added off the kitchen/dining section to create an expansive day-to-day living space.

 A chap with a grá for reclaimed pine fitted a new kitchen and another craftsman built a feature brick wall new into which sits the Aga and a custom-built cabinet for drinking glasses.

 It even has a little shelf that can be pulled out when pouring a drink. A drying rack mounted over the Aga sits well with the country kitchen style, as does a Belfast sink. The kitchen is open to the dining room, which is open to the sun room, so natural light is at a premium.

 A door in the sunroom opens onto a very large patio that surrounds the entire house. 

The patio is below lawn level and acts as a sun trap. 

It’s surrounded by expertly chosen trees and shrubs, the handiwork of professional landscaper Laura Travers (nee Lynch, of Timoleague House) whose trusty choices created a garden never short on colour or texture. 

Its splendid upkeep is down to Hungarian gardener Thomas, who’s looked after it for 15 or so years and who excels in tulip cultivation.

The site Mountain View is on easily accommodates a sweeping limestone driveway and a large parking bay in front of the house, as well as the extensive gardens and an outdoor timber chalet, but at one time, it extended to seven acres, much of it fields, some of it orchard.

 In 2006, the Cronin family sold off some of the land for development to Fleming Construction, who built two dozen or so homes, called The Orchard, over the wall. Mountain View’s grounds are now far more manageable, very private and at a level of elevation that facilitates views of Musheramor, the highest of the Boggeragh Mountains and neighbouring Musherabeg. The ruins of Mount Massey, the Flower of Macroom (grand house burnt during the War of Independence), are visible from an upstairs room.

All five bedrooms, of which the main is en suite, have 9’ high ceilings. Four are dual aspect. There are two landings, one of which can be accessed from the downstairs utility (there are two staircases). An office can be accessed from this space.

The most elegant room in the house is the double aspect drawing room where three large sash windows channel light in. 

The focal point is a locally sourced slate fireplace with brass hood and beading, decorated by antique tiles. It connects to the family room via double doors.

“About 15 years ago, we blew out the wall between them to create a great entertainment space, handy for a crowd,” the owner says.

 Around about the same time, they put a new roof on the house with improved insulation. Windows to the front of Mountain View were replaced.

Some upgrades will be necessary for new owners, such as upgrading bathrooms. A shower room at the back of the hallway has been a very useful feature for a GP. Peter recalls how on one of the first occasions that he acted as locum for his dad, he was called out to an accident where a woman had fallen off a horse and broken a leg during the hunt.

“I went out in my best suit and then had to traverse 200 yards of muddy field to give her a shot of painkiller. I didn’t have wellies on, so that shower came in handy when I came home,” he laughs.

Peter, now retired – and whose own son, Peter Junior, is continuing the family GP tradition in Macroom – no longer needs a home the size of Mountain View.

 It’s with great reluctance that he is selling up, but it’s time, he says, for another family to enjoy it.

Handling the sale is Norma Healy of Sherry FitzGerald – her mother recalls Dr Cronin making a late night house visit to treat Ms Healy and her sister when they were very young – and she says Mountain View is an “enchanting period home” in a setting of great privacy, yet conveniently closer to Macroom town centre (50 yards downhill) and across the road from St Joseph’s primary school and St Mary’s secondary school.

Macroom has a great deal going for it, Ms Healy says, including plenty of retail and hospitality outlets, a scenic walkway and 18-hole golf course. The new Macroom bypass has taken c 8,000 vehicles out of the town each day and has improved travel times significantly between Cork city and Killarney.

VERDICT: A very elegant home in a gloriously landscaped private setting, in the heart of Macroom town.