Cork Bellair Estate features one-off sculptural glass balustrade staircase

B-rated move-in extended No 14 Bellair off the Douglas Road has had lots of work done

Extended upwards, to the side and to the back, No 14 Bellair Estate between the Douglas and  Ballinlough roads is guided at €790,000 by agent Timothy Sullivan

Bellair Estate, Douglas Road, Cork
€790,000
Size	220 sq m (2,355 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	B

There’s a certain swagger to Bellair, as though it has always known it stole a march on Ballinlough, landing by the narrowest of margins in the affluent Cork City suburb of Douglas.

While Bradley Brothers spent much of the 1950s building out Ballinlough into a maze of housing estates largely dominated by three-bed semi-ds, the 1960s saw a different builder enter the fray with more ambitious ideas for what a family home in the suburbs could look like.

No 14 has a large box dormer main bedroom suite, added in the 1980s, while the side and rear add-ons and upgrades were done in 2008

That builder was the late Denis McCarthy and it was he who built Bellair Estate, on family-linked lands between the main Douglas and Ballinlough Roads. Indeed, for anyone looking for a vote of confidence in the area, he himself lived at Villa Nova, a fine pile on five acres at the Douglas end of Bellair Estate.

Bellair, in its day, generated the kind of chatter we associate these days with the launch of high-end Blackrock Road schemes, such as Botanika, or Hermitage Farm on Model Farm Road. Its 24 houses had downstairs loos for goodness sake, at a time when most estate homes were still being built with the traditional arrangement of one upstairs bathroom.

Front sitting room

From the get-go, Bellair was targeting middle-class families, and nothing has changed to alter that status. The houses — mostly large semi-ds with the occasional detached — are continually evolving: added to, improved, upgraded. The one constant is the Douglas Road location, which can hardly be improved upon, and carries at least as much weight as a 40sq m rear extension.

Internal alterations saw a large, L-shaped open plan kitchen/diner created. There are also three rear utility/boot/study rooms, front sitting  room and guest WC all at ground

Now with a B energy rating, No 14 Bellair Estate comes to market with that rock-solid Douglas postcode and in a fully evolved state, having been extended rearwards, upwards and sideways, all of it so artfully done that you really can’t imagine why anyone would change a single thing.

Gas fires helped No 14 to get B energy rating

You certainly wouldn’t be touching the glass balustrade staircase — in fact it should carry a premium (and possibly an ‘Off Limits’ sign) — because it’s a one-off sculptural glass installation commissioned by the homeowners and designed by Eoin Turner, a well-known Cork-based artist and designer: turner’s large-scale cast-glass works include the sculptural glass surround for Nano Nagle’s tomb, in the gardens of Nano Nagle Place on Cork City’s Douglas St, as well as a major architectural glass piece behind the main altar in Dublin’s Christ Church, not to mention private commissions for superyachts.

Glass act: artistic touches by owner and glass maker Eoin Turner

As one half of the owners of No 14 Bellair is quite the artist herself, she has a full appreciation of just how special this staircase is. She points out the subtle embedded element — fragments of copper, which are also a source of colour. It’s pretty special. She added her own finial to the newel post — a ceramic ball sourced in TK Maxx that absolutely works.

An artist’s eye for detail is evident throughout the house, from the back-lit coloured glass of the bath panel in the main bathroom where the silhouette of what looks like a ship’s portholes is visible (some clever cutting in the plywood beneath) to the bathroom floor tiles that sparkle like the night sky, to the bold burnt orange walls in a little potting room/workshop to the rear, with flashes of the same bold colour reoccurring in just the right amount in the great, big open-plan kitchen/ dining/ living room.

This generous-spirited, welcome-you-with-open-arms, easy-going space is tailor-made for lazy family breakfasts or convivial get-togethers with friends. In fact it’s the result of a friendship with an architect, who, during a visit to No 14, was pressed into adding his two pence ha’penny worth to a half-baked plan.

No 14 Bellair from the air

“We asked him for ideas but he said he was way too busy. But then he just got out a pen and paper and did a sketch anyway,” says the owner. The concept wasn’t a million miles away from what the owners had envisaged, but the architect’s input added some nice architectural flourishes as well as a couple of Velux roof windows in the tall, monopitch roof. It made all the difference to the open-natured feel of the room and to the amount of light that gets through.

 In addition to the two large roof lights, full height glazing runs across the side and back walls, and patio doors slide open to a timber deck — replaced just this month — with an aspect that faces west. To describe it as a tranquil, private haven is a cliché, but if the cap fits...

The cedar-clad rear extension — added in 2008 with Hillback as overseeing contractors — delivered more than a winning open-plan space. Where once stood a deep-set garage now stands a trio of interlinked rooms, each compact, each working hard. The furthest back, with the burnt orange walls, is a sort of garden room, used for potting plants and as a work studio for the artist, and has a handy sink and shelving, and patio doors of its own overlooking the garden.

Middle of three multi-use support rooms for day-to-day family life

In the middle of the trio — all of which have an overhead Velux — is another utility with sink and secondary fridge/freezer and extensive storage. To the front is a boot room-cum-bike-shed-cum-utility which can be accessed externally from the printed concrete side drive. For busy households it’s the kind of space that earns its keep every day: space to clean up mucky kids and even muckier pets, before letting them off the leash to roam across the solid hardwood floors that run through the ground floor.

That hardwood flooring starts in the hallway, where you will find that early-adopter downstairs loo, inside a front door greatly enhanced by Northside Glass. To the left is a cosy front living room with a solid birch floor and solid wood shelving either side of an inset gas fire.

The same warm shelving, by the cabinet maker who also fitted the kitchen, is in the living section of the main open-plan space, which also has a gas fire and yet another set of patio doors to the garden where raised beds are laden with trees and shrubbery (including a pear tree) while a garden shed is so tucked away you’d be hard pushed to spot it and where all heads turn to the magnificent centre-piece, some evergreen enigma with the most delicate of fronds.

Rear of No 14 (decking since  replaced)

You can catch it from a different angle upstairs, where there are four bedrooms and a main bathroom on the middle floor and from a top level attic conversion, done in the 1980s with full planning granted at the time. The views from this top room can be quite spectacular on New Year’s Eve, when the night sky is alive with fireworks, or this time of year, when it’s streaked at sunset with pink and gold.

Top floor bedroom, with four more at mid level

Auctioneer Tim Sullivan, who sold the house to the current owners 20 years ago, says it will sell easily for the same reason now: the location doesn’t get much better for families of children of school-going/college-going age because — drumroll please, another cliché — it’s so damn “close to everything”.

Everything includes schools, public transport, sporting facilities, pizza delivery (yes, it was a factor for the current owners, who moved in from the countryside when they bought No14), hospitals, third-level education institutes and yes, Douglas village.

Mr Sullivan says it’s a terrific family home, “very spacious, very airy, quirky in a good way”. He says the upstairs suite is “magnificent” (very generous bedroom, bathroom and home office on a fine size landing). He points out that it has full planning “with some minor requirements to be addressed for compliance”.

Top floor study beside bedroom and bathroom

The agent is guiding this 220 sq m home (includes the top floor) at €790,000. Last year, No 12 Bellair, called Ormond, sold for €845,000 and is being upgraded.

Open door

VERDICT: An estate that’s never lost its desirability, Bellair is confident, without being flashy, and its well-built houses tend to be “forever” homes. This one has served with aplomb as a family home for the past 20 years. Its occupants have loved the neighbourhood, city proximity, and the convenience, and, it goes without saying, the Ballinlough/Douglas location.