Cork's medics will give clean bill of health to Clancoole by Cork University Hospital

1980s-built Model Farm Road home is on a valuable double site 

Clancoole is on a double site: the house next door is getting a major overhaul. Pictures: H-Pix

Model Farm Road, Cork City
€1.4 million
Size	256 sq m (2,740 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	C3

Very model of a modern home

THE good-sized and well-set family home Clancoole comes to market today on an auspicious date — it’s the 64th wedding anniversary of a couple who wed at the Lough church and who, years later, went on to build this trade-up suburban Cork home to suit their growing family.

Broad, detached, and on what must in effect have been a double-sized site, Clancoole is set just off the Model Farm Road, by the very start of Bishopstown Avenue.

It shares a cul-de-sac setting with just one or two other homes, once past a low-rise niche apartment scheme.

Bishopstown Avenue setting off the Model Farm Road for Clancoole. Agents Cohalan Downing guide the home on a half acre site at €1.4 million. Picture: H-Pix

It was deemed a prime relocation option for the couple who only moved a few hundred yards further west, from their first family home at Woodlawn, by the 1950s Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit — a landmark structure by Dennehys Cross and the Wilton Road.

Good reception rooms

The couple had four children, three sons and a daughter, brought to adulthood here at Clancoole, able to make use of proximity to schools and third level colleges — both UCC and the MTU campuses are within an easy walk along the way — with the area which developed significantly from the mid-1900s continuing to evolve as one of Cork’s more ‘sought-after addresses’.

That is down to things like proximity to major employers such as the 1,000-bed Cork University Hospital, whose main campus is less than 1km from Clancoole and which evolved from the Regional Hospital/’ Wilton Hilton’, and which came along in 1978. Close too is the Bon Secours on College Road, a private hospital which has evolved from 1915 with over 300 beds.

Medics at both facilities tend to favour the Model Farm Road as a place to live close to work.

Hence strong values, strong list of €1m+ sales to date, and the arrival of several new home developments with price tags up to and over €1m also in the past three years, in the likes of Merton and Vailima on the Model Farm Rd, as well as at Ecklinville, off College Road — all, coincidentally, niche schemes built in the grounds of former individual homes on extensive grounds.

Fortunately, home hunters won’t have to compete with developers: Clancoole occupies a good portion of its mature and private half an acre site, too good to remove.

However, while being sold “as is”, there’s surely scope for at least one more dwelling on a lower garden tier — perhaps at some time soon, or some other more distant time in the future?

It will be a nice option for 2025’s buyers perhaps to consider when or if they come to think of trading-down themselves, or maybe give a site to offspring?

Clancoole faces down a short cul-de-sac just after the start of Bishopstown Avenue at the Model Farm Road end, putting the marker of the Rendezvous pub and restaurant within 200m of its front door.

The cul-de-sac starts with a very neat, well-kept, low rise, and low density apartment development, Hartfield/Kinloch Court. Then, it shares the end of the row with just one other detached house, Skeldale, sold in 2021 for €710,000.

Skeldale is currently undergoing a major rebuild, and so is certain to see more substantial sums spent on it before completion.

Called Clancoole after the name of the Blackrock childhood home of one of the couple who’d built here, the house is fresh to market this weekend with estate agents Malcolm Tyrrell and Brian Olden, of Cohalan Downing.

They guide the approximately 2,600sq ft family home at €1.4m — knowing the premium put on the location, not to mind the fact it’s on around half an acre.

Further up Bishopstown Avenue, a one-off older era home called Small Acre fetched €1.68m in 2023, with the value there underpinned by site size (the approximately 2,600sq ft D1-rated property had a big dog leg to its gardens behind, also with possible future site scope).

Bishopstown Avenue also had three other €1m+ sales, Doirin for €1.15m in 2023, Dun Padraig the same year for €1.25m, and Mount Nephin fetching €1.38m in 2021.

(Generally speaking, the Model Farm Road and Watefall area get the majority of greater Bishopstown’s €1m+ sales.)

Features here at Clancoole are topped by the half an acre site size, with a fine apron of tarmac for parking in front and, to the right hand side, there’s a detached garage with store and up and over door to one side (“the south”) with a wide expanse of rear skirting patio coming around to a side garden and, then, large lawn down a slight step or two.

Internally, Clancoole has reception rooms left and right of the central hall — each with bays projecting to the front corners like epaulettes.

The one on the right goes from front to back, and the larger, on the left, is double aspect west and north.

It links behind then to a kitchen and wide utility, and there’s also a guest WC under the stairs.

Upstairs is an attractive arched window to the front on a spacious landing (big enough for a bright home office/desk?), and then there are five bedrooms — one with en suite and extensive dressing/robes space — main family bathroom and, for some a near-piece de resistance, a very deep walk-in hotpress with enough shelving to take a B&B’s worth of bed linen and clothing.

Overall condition is very good, but the buyers of 2025 are going to make their own changes — even decorative ones.

However, the bones of the property are excellent, there is a good floor plan on both levels, there is a floored attic with pull-down stairs for storage.

The house has been underpinned, drains were renewed, has Hele windows (with a slight tint), and a C3 BER — so it’s good from the ground up for whatever and whoever next comes its way.

VERDICT: More modern than most Model Farm Road homes of this size and site area for sure, Clancoole comes with a huge scope to do even more with it, in a bullet-proof location.