This ‘modest’ mansion is in apple-pie order

Tommy Barker says location is the reason why you can call a newly-built home of 3,800 sq ft and with a €1.6 million-plus price guide, modest.

MODESTY is a relative term, and compared to some of its 8,000 and 10,000 sq ft neighbours (some so ornate they might have been role models for Polly Pocket mansions) the recently-completed Bramley quietly sings its own praises.

Selected, and then adapted, from a Potton Homes UK timber frame selection of houses, the Queen Anne-style ‘old rectory’ is a timber-frame construct, with render and brick exterior, under a natural slate roof.

Bramley’s vendors were among the first of 15 site buyers to build in the former walled orchard of Maryborough House Hotel. They are now relocating to a house by the water’s edge in Cork harbour.

Dennis Guerin of Frank V Murphy & Co auctioneers, guides Bramley at over €1.6 million. Though as it is the first resale here, he acknowledges that judging just how much it may sell for will be hard to call: given sales of €1.5 million in the nearby Paddocks, and the site value here alone of about €750,000 (though all sold at the time for around €400,000 per site) an eventual figure may be closer to €1.8 million.

It has the expected high specification, such as Villeroy and Boch sanitary ware and double showers, porcelain tiling and plush wallpapers (in the loos) as well as an enormous Lacanche gas range in the David Kiely Concepts kitchen.

Bramley has four first floor bedrooms, two with en suite bathrooms, ranged off a very open landing area, and a second staircase leads to the top floor, currently left as 800 sq ft of open space, floored, lit but un-partitioned at present.