Kendalsbrae in Douglas is a €2.95m Cork treasure waiting to be discovered

NOT a lot has changed in the years since top Cork City home Kendalsbrae last changed hands: advertised in 1969 in the Cork Examiner, it was billed as “a truly magnificent residence, on two and a quarter acres” … and, in the heart of ‘old’ Douglas too.

Okay, Douglas might have changed; in fact it has sprawled and spread, but Kendalsbrae is still the same magnificent house, has only ever had two sets of owners since it was built in 1928, and even more to the point, it’s still on 2.25 acres.

In Douglas. Ye Gods.

Even though it’s got as much grounds with it as many a housing estate, you’d never know it is there, it only pops its head up today as it’s up for sale: whoever the fortunate buyer is now will also be here long term almost certainly.

“I’d have to say it is without a doubt the very finest property I’ve seen in Cork in over 30 years in the business,” says selling agent Brian Olden, MD of Cohalan Downing, and he puts a guide price of €2.95m on the chance to take ownership of it and bring it on, gently, into its second century.

This reporter recalls the same agent suggesting nearly 20 years ago that The Rectory in Blackrock was Cork’s best house: the market agreed as it sold in 2014 for €2m and, after extension and upgrades, the 1870s Blackrock glebe or rectory is worth multiples of that sum now.

Yet, the amount of land, the maturity of the tree screening, and the location today at Kendalsbrae shades it for Mr Olden. While the house at the core of this extraordinary package is of a different character, this too will be worth multiples of today’s value in years to come, he asserts.

His sales colleague in Cohalan Downing, Maurice Cohalan, can only agree when we met on the lawns of Kendalsbrae this week, a revelation of a property to almost all in Cork.

That’s from Mr Cohalan’s personal experience, as he was the man who last sold Kendalsbrae, by public auction, in June 1969 while he was working with a firm called Osborne King and Megran, another part of old Cork estate agency that evolved into Hamilton Osborne King, and, several iterations later, is now Savills.

Mr Cohalan recalls it selling for £24,850 back then (the now-veteran agent is the keeper of many Cork sales records, and deals, and recalls auction rising in £50s) when, he says, a Douglas semi-d might have been sold for £4,500 and a detached for £6,000, and ponders if the same multiple of values across house types applies today.

On site value alone (2.25 acres, to repeat) this is a multi-million euro property offer: by way of comparison, the 19th century Feltrim on the city end of Cork’s Blackrock Road made c €6m last year, bought for upscale residential development most likely, subject to planning.

But, selling today, Mr Olden says development values won’t apply: “This deserves to be bought as it is, as one of the very best private family homes anywhere in the city, you’ll never get the chance for something like this again.”

While that might sound like sale schtick, it’s pretty much borne out by the evidence… at least until the next “very best Cork property” offer comes around. But, that could be decades away? This is for now.

Kendalsbrae is the quintessential trophy or prize property, starting with location.

Where is it, because you almost certainly won’t recognise it?

It’s between Woodview and the Well Road, two of Douglas’s priciest locations.

The Price Register shows six sales at Woodview alone in excess of €1m, topped by the €2.3m sale of a house called Currabeg. The original Currabeg was on 1.5 acres (making for a €2.4m sale all-in) and that mid 20th-century house was demolished and replaced with a towering c10,000 sq ft new build, visible through the trees from Kendalsbrae as a suitably distant, yet next-door neighbour.

Meanwhile, the Well Road also has a half a dozen or so €1m+ sales in recent years, including several new builds at the like of Greenbanks at around €1.5m each, while a whopper is currently being finished off in the grounds of a former home called Randall.

Hidden between these two ‘addresses’ is a cul de sac lane entered at the Douglas Road end of the dog-leg road Woodview, down a lane colloquially known as ‘the Black Patch’.

Realistically, this Black Patch is more of a Golden Quarter of a Mile given the calibre of some of the handful of homes it opens to, topped by the towering Currabeg and Kendalsbrae, along with some modern one-offs: the lane bounds gardens on Woodview too, as well as former mews conversions/back garden builds behind a couple of large Edwardian era Well Road homes such as Palermia and Ellerslie.

Kendalsbrae occupies the centre of its quite incredible 2.25 acres, only barely glimpsed from its entrance pillars and neatly trimmed hedge boundary on Woodview/Black Patch: what you do see, enticingly and beguilingly, is a bit of the double garage, attached to the main house by a covered canopy, a fantastic addition to any home in the Irish climate (you can drive through it and park in private behind too.)

The grounds are laid out in various sections, with enormous lawns; there’s the outline in a hedged ‘secret section’ which was most likely a lawn tennis court in yesteryears, along with an orchard-style section for fruit and veg growing, with timber storage areas for the fireplace, plus an oil tank for the central heating that appears to be on a commercial scale such is its capacity.

The entire site is ringed by a variety of mature hardwoods, with one particular stunning beech tree, as well as oaks, yew, chestnut, and weeping willow, with snowdrops and bluebells on the way, as well as magnolia, camellias, and walkways bounded by well-tamed evergreen hedges. Entirely out of sight is a sturdy steel gate that gives pedestrian access to the Well Road by the former GoGos cafe, now a Soma cafe.

And, nobody out there in the day-to-day world knows what’s inside the tall Well Road walls, at least until today.

So, what about the house?

Well it’s stunner, full of original early 20th-century Tudor revival or Tudorbethan architecture and detailing, utterly unspoiled, lovingly minded rather than ever overhauled, with both interior and exterior finish integrity redolent of the 1920s.

It runs to 278sq m (c3,000sq ft), with most of its good rooms (in fairness, they are all pretty good!) with a double aspect, while the best space of all has to be the entrance hall, double height with gallery across the top linking bedrooms at the ends, with the magnificent, gleaming

staircase in Austrian oak, according to the 1969 ad in the then-Cork Examiner.

Unusually, even the stair rods pinning the carpet runner up its length are in polished oak, not brass as is more typical, perhaps redolent of an Arts and Crafts sentiment of respect for materials?

Commercial ‘Tudoesque’ examples are the likes of the Beamish & Crawford Counting House on South Main Street, stabling by St FinBarre’s Cathedral, and the Winthrop Arcade by the GPO.

Domestic examples include several main Douglas Road homes, others by UCC on Donovans Road, a few around Blackrock and suburban Douglas, with a few examples too in ‘old’ Endsleigh near Woodview.

(Handily, Kendalsbrae comes to market just as ‘Tudorbethan’ Cork is detailed by academic Dr Tom Spalding in his just published Cork University Press publication Designed for Life: Architecture and design in Cork city 1900-90 which featured in these pages last weekend).

Offering Kendalsbrae as an executor sale for a Cork business family who bought it back in 1969, agent Brian Olden says the vendor family believes the design to possibly have been by the Cork firm of Chillingworth & Levie, and it certainly fits their style, while other significant architectural firms of the early 20th century doing Cork homes of this calibre included the Hills (William, Henry, and Arthur) and James P McMullen.

Whoever get to take ownership now will certainly determine its original architect if and when they come to make changes, extend perhaps, add a garden room or suitable matching wing or two for brighter rooms.

Some will choose to stick with the dominant Tudor look: might others want a complete ‘readable’ contrast, going for glass and contemporary as has been done in a few cases such as behind Edwardian homes on the city’s Marina by Blackrock village, or at Blackrock’s Rectory?

Architects as accomplished as Kendalsbrae’s initiator could bring this to a whole new, further level (subject to planning consents) as it’s seen from virtually nowhere, and it isn’t a protected structure. Original owners who commissioned the design a century ago were the Ogilvie family, associated with commerce and confectionary in the earlier decades of the 20th century via the firm Ogilvie & Moore by Parnell Place and Clontarf Street, and layout has changed little ever since.

Quirks include a main bedroom with louvered doors concealing a WC on one side of a wide window and a shower room in a similar size cubicle facing it, tiled in pinks, there’s coloured sanitary ware ‘of the day’, a number of bedrooms with wash hand basins and fireplaces, as well as some bells for summoning servants and a dining room with two doors, one for showing guests to the table, the other closer to the kitchen, for serving/staff/caterers.

It appears rock solid, 100% true and straight, with immaculate oak joinery, older era electric wiring, windows are leaded double glazing in pvc frames with quality handles, there’s a 1970s dark oak kitchen and some pantry/service rooms and stores, with a well papered and pampered series of rooms.

Overall, it has a lovely, rather a timeless air, indoors, and outside, with Douglas old and new on its doorstep, yet a world away if and when you want to retire from its woes.

VERDICT: With its south of England Shires looks, and north of England/Scottish borders sounding name, Kendalsbrae is a top-order Cork home to prize, and one which will repay rich dividends on whatever it costs now to acquire and make a new family home of.