High-end, extended and updated €585k Clonakilty home has smarts galore

ALREADY a good house when first built 20 years ago, now No 3 An Corran, on the fringes of Clonakilty, is not only bigger inside, but it’s even better again — smart in more ways than one.

In fact, it smartly comes all set up, not just with an electric charging point for the car, but it also has a pre-programmed electric lawnmower that goes about its business without a grumble on the pristine landscaped grounds, currently perfectly set off by an abundantly flowering white cherry blossom tree.

Owned by a professional couple who are trading down and trading into the very heart of the West Cork town, the blossom-blessed home they’re set to leave behind is one of the best to come to market in the area for a while, says selling agent Andy Donoghue, who heads up the region’s busy auctioneering firm Hodnett Forde.

He says No 3 is in show-home condition and, while he’s right in terms of its quality and presentation, it’s also better than that. It has its own personality too, in terms of very effective internal layout and a reordering, garden landscaping, art on the walls, books on shelves and an excellent B3 BER into the bargain.

(One of the couple works in the alternative energy sector and is clued into energy efficiency, hence perhaps the ‘belt and braces’ approach they took to insulation upgrades, using both wall pumping and dry-lining.) 

The detached 216 sq m four- to five-bed home, with part-stone front façade, is at Gallanes, within a walk of Clonakilty, off the N71 by the start of the R600 road out to Timoleague. It’s one of half a dozen similar-sized houses built two decades ago in a horseshoe shape cluster by local builder PJ Hayes, who’s now building again on the other side of Clonakilty, having opened a larger site off the Ardfield/causeway road.

Here, all six An Corran home owners have invested heavily in landscaping and it has paid huge dividends in terms of additional privacy. In fact, several of the neighbours also have white cherry blossom trees adorning their gardens.

Initially the builder kept this one himself, before selling to a couple who’d owned a high-end restaurant in Clonakilty. The current owners bought it in 2005 and say other resales in this niche enclave just don’t seem happen.

When they moved in, relocating home to Ireland after a period living in the UK’s Surrey with three children, they decided after a while  to reorder this house’s ground floor, moving the kitchen and utility room and linking it to a very bright main living room (one of three reception rooms at ground). They also extended up in to the attic, with plenty of room found for a proper staircase.

It leads to a private level, used as a comfortable bedroom, with three large Velux windows in the sloping ceiling overlooking farmland and the town’s water reservoir beyond. It has a good en suite bathroom with shower, plus a very large walk-in dressing room/wardrobe, with masses of shelving and storage.

The level below has four bedrooms, one of which also is en suite, and the main family bathroom. Now that the three children have more or less fled the nest, presentation here is super-neat and tidy.

At ground/entry level, there are reception rooms left and right of the gleaming bright, porcelain-tiled hall, with the carpeted one to the right home to very large sofas, an integrated wood burning stove and coved ceilings. The walls are painted a striking dark blue, a perfect foil for paintings and pictures.

On the other side, the as-large other reception room has a bay window, a more traditional fireplace and porcelain-tiled floor, matching that in the kitchen/dining end to which it links in a big L-shape. Here, there’s a contemporary kitchen done by local maker Seamus White with a white stone-topped island, and banks and walls of gloss units, some with luxe wood pattern effect, all gleaming.

Off the kitchen too are a guest WC and a very large, walk-through utility with banks of storage units. Beyond on the house’s eastern gable is a further reception/study/den, set up initially as a home cinema, but now repurposed as a work-from-home office. It is bright and south-facing, overlooking the front gardens and lawns, where the programmed electric lawnmower might even be doing its very own ‘work at home’ trimming job.

Back in the kitchen, double doors open to a rear, paved patio with low retaining walls, well-planted up tiers full of shrubs and that scene-stealing cherry blossom. Off to the left is a sheltered outdoor seating and dining area, with feature tall steel chiminea.

Off to the other side is a large shed by another patio space. The property’s c 0.55 of an acre of garden is surrounded with mature hedging.

Hodnett Forde principal Andy Donoghue says No 3’s really going to impress as soon as he can get people inside the door for physical viewings. He expects demand from locals trading up and from those relocating to the very successful and popular coastal town from other parts of Ireland and from overseas, who won’t have to do a thing to move in.

Meanwhile the Price Register shows over 20 sales of homes for over €500k in the greater Clonakilty are since 2010, several of which are the new builds in the ongoing Cul Ard development near An Corran, with 13 sites being developed for c 2,000 sq ft detacheds, variously priced under and over €500k by joint agents Hodnett Ford and DNG Galvin.

VERDICT: Mint order throughout thanks to on-going upgrades, including new reordered kitchen and bathrooms.