IT’S quite small, but it’s perfectly formed and beautifully customised, with a garden that lives up to the sound of the address — Gardiner’s Hill.
No 3 has been home to a couple who bought nearly 20 years ago, who love the area, who planted the gardens (there’s a frond-full wisteria thick as a forearm now at the back), have been looking for a trade-up option in the vicinity for yonks — and their patience has finally paid off.
While one of the owners is an accountant who cycles to and from his city offices, the other of the vendors taught Mr Fenton in his secondary school days, teaching art primarily, and her eye for colour and décor is evident in No 3, along with some quirky display items.
Chief among them is a stunning coat, which had belonged to her stylish grandmother, proudly presented on a mannequin: maybe the sharp eye for shape and colour runs in the family as she herself went on to do additional studies in the Mallow College of Design and Tailoring?
Art abounds here, with lots on the wall to engage the eye and also eye-casting is a little set piece of collectable dolls’ house-like pieces (cutsey Maileg Mice) on a bedroom window sill like an installation — a play set-piece for the couple’s primary school-going daughter.
They are all upping sticks now in any case for the move slightly further up the hill, and at the €370k price guide estate agent Paul Fenton (aka bidding to be ‘best boy in class’ expects interest from both ends of the age spectrum, starters-out and traders-down.
Sales of any house type up here are rare enough, and No 3 is just one of three in this terrace (No 2 Glenthorne Villas sold back in 2016 for a mere €118,000 and has since been upgraded): it’s a 78 sq m home (nearly 850 sq ft) which feels a bit bigger, and at some stage it had been a three-bed, but previous owners made it a two-bed with a large bathroom, more than big enough for both a bath and a separate shower.
It could be reconfigured as a three-bed perhaps, but for many next putative owners it
will be a perfect fit, with one good sized double bedroom, a compact second bedroom, and a big and bright main bathroom.
At ground is a hall with original tiled floor and internal arch by the stairs with carved corbel figures, and off to the left are two reception rooms, interlinked now, with double doors between them, put in by the couple years ago, complete with older style coloured glass in blues and reds.
Both ground floor rooms have classical, antique chandeliers with delicate pendulous glass pieces, a contrast with Philippe Starck-style translucent Louis Ghost chairs, another style icon from a later century.
Off the hospitable dining/day area is a simple kitchen, galley-style, narrow but ticking all the essential boxes, and then double door lead out to a sheltered patio with raised garden, abundantly planted down the years and super-mature, with back-in-vogue hydrangeas, shrubs, compact trees, and seasonal flowers, with remaining wisps of foxgloves, but nothing is as eye-catching as the trailing wisteria, planted against a south-facing stone and brick boundary wall and which has happily made its marching way across the back of the house to the kitchen extension and small outhouses.
A scan up and down the road to St Luke’s Cross shows a number of similarly house-proud owners and the clear input of architect-led designs too, whilst St Luke’s itself is just rocking, with a music venue, new shops and cafes, a recently arrived pop-up book shop (via Mercier publishers), and more.
