Gilded Belvelly setting for €640,000 House of the Week
4 Cois Fota, Belvelly
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Belvelly, Cork |
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€640,000 |
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Size |
223 sq m (2400 sq ft) |
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Bedrooms |
4 |
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Bathrooms |
5 |
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BER |
B3 |
IF YOU’RE in the market for a new home, how do you evaluate a prospective neighbourhood? Perhaps examine the number of re-sales? If everyone’s getting out of Dodge, the signs are ominous. However, if re-sales are rare, it’s reasonable to speculate that people like living there.
At Cois Fota, in Belvelly, on the road to Cobh, just three homes have been re-sold since 2010. One of those, No 2, featured in these pages last year. Its owner told the Irish Examiner that she’d lived at Cois Fota for 20-odd years and considered herself lucky to have settled there, as the house only came her way when a sale fell through.
Built in the early noughties by Kinsale-based builder Joe Neville, Cois Fota’s Belvelly setting is pretty special. Not only is there a restored Martello tower at the entrance to the estate – part of a necklace of defence towers built around the Irish coastline in the 19th century — there’s also a restored 13th century castle nearby.
Once looking like it might take a dive into the adjoining Belvelly Channel, it’s now a magnificently restored, privately owned show-stopping landmark, gilded with bronze and gold sculptures. Such is the company they keep in Belvelly.
House hunters who like the idea of a history-rich environment may be interested in the arrival to market of No 4 Cois Fota.
In the same family since it was built, they’ve done a smashing job of the garden. Centre stage are the magnificent fronds of three Dicksonia evergreen tree ferns.
Understudy roles go to the roses, hydrangeas, rhododendrons and camellias, spread around the grounds. Low limestone walls add texture and the site is wrapped by beech, laurel and Robinia hedging. Privacy is at a premium as No 4 is tucked away in a corner of the L-shaped estate.
Indoors at No 4 — temporarily a rental — quality features are plentiful. A kitchen highlight is the limestone countertop, four-inch-thick slabs you could carve a statue from. The rough “tumbled” edges add depth.
Appliances in this Siematic kitchen are top notch: DeDietrich oven and dishwasher, Gaggenau gas hob and extractor fan.
Light spills in through a window in the side gable.
It floods in from the conservatory/dining area, open to the kitchen, but with the option of closing it off using full height, glass-paneled, bi-fold doors, by Rosewood Joinery.
A door leads to a patio and the landscaped back garden.
No 4, one of 10 detached homes arranged around a green in the upmarket estate, is an ideal family trade up. At 2,400 sq ft, it comes with two large reception rooms with solid oak floors either side of the double-height hallway; a fine home office or playroom (or whatever you need) off the kitchen; four bedrooms and five bathrooms.
New owners will probably revisit the upstairs layout: perhaps reinstate a bedroom that made way for a dressing room and move a door on a bathroom to reinstate access from the landing. All of the bedrooms are doubles and three have en suites. There’s a downstairs loo too, a utility and a garage that can be accessed internally and externally.
Selling No 4 is Paul Fenton of Sherry FitzGerald and he says it has terrific trade up potential.
“It’s a beautifully finished, well proportioned family home, just a 10 minute drive to Cobh and less than 15 minutes to the Dunkettle Interchange, so it’s a great location. It will appeal to upsizers and overseas buyers” the agent says.
The guide price for No 4 Cois Fota is €640,000.
Quality family home. Bonus points for having Fota Wildlife Park on the doorstep, where there’s a train station for kids travelling to school in Cork city.
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