GP’s €1.05m Maryborough Hill home just what the doctor ordered

THE last time Glenora appeared for sale, the property market was heading for its peak, in October 2006, with a €1.1m AMV: it went ‘sale agreed’ at €1.45m within a few weeks.

When that deal didn’t proceed, it got reoffered, getting bids pretty much back to the same sort of sum, before selling to an older couple, retired city GP Dr Jim McKenna and his wife, Miní, who had just sold their family home on the Glasheen Rd for development.

What they paid for Glenora in 2007 isn’t recorded on the Price Register, which only covers dates from 2010; not only was it not cheap, they converted the then-2,600 sq ft single-storey bungalow in to a dormer.

Estate agent Mick McKenna is one of Dr Jim’s and Miní’s five children (several of whom went in to medicine), along with siblings Joe, James, Johnny, and Pixie.

Sole daughter Pixie qualified as a GP at University College Cork in the 1990s and later became a familiar media face when presenting Channel Four’s Embarrassing Illnesses, Embarrassing Bodies and in 2016 on RTÉ show Pixie’s Sex Clinic.

As in the 2000s, property is once more a ‘hot’ topic in Irish society, from one end of a market (where housing needs are at crisis proportions) to the upper end (where values continue to rise, now put at 10-20% over peak).

Back in our 2007 report on Glenora and bids at €1.35m/€1.45m, we noted the sale of up to 14 new builds at Mont Oval Village for €1.2m and also included comments from estate agents that there seemed to be up to 20 would-be buyers in the Cork market with €2m to spend.

Shades of 2007 again in the mid 2020s. The upper end of the Cork market has seen a dozen new homes sell for more than €1m in locations like the Model Farm Rd, at Vailima and Merton, at Orchard Road’s Ecklinville, and at Hettfyfield, Douglas, while the market up to and over €2m is strong for older, pre-owned stock.

Given the spend on Glenora back in the 2000s, to include purchase price likely to have been around €1.35m and the subsequent addition of two first-floor, en-suite dormer bedrooms and staircase, the expectation is that the enlarged Glenora should again sell in the mid-€1m-€2m price range, but auctioneer Mick McKenna is more cautious, especially in his launch guide, pricing it from €1.05m.

Would-be viewers might expect it to go far higher. The Price Register shows 16 €1m+plus sales with a Maryborough Douglas address (and 50 in the wider Douglas area), at Maryborough Orchard, at The Paddocks, and on the hill itself. Nearby comparable sales include Creighton, at €1.46m, in late 2024, and the contemporary and high-end Clonard in 2022, at €1.5m, entered from Maryborough Avenue to the rear.

This home, Glenora, originally had its grounds between Maryborough Hill and Maryborough Avenue, but a short-term owner, an architect with canny market instincts, split the site and built a crisp one-off to the back of Glenora, fully out of sight, while also doing a significant upgrade to the original 1960s bungalow, which had been a childcare centre at the time of his own purchase, in the early to mid 2000s.

The architect reworked the interiors well, redoing the kitchen with distinctive, 3” teak wraparounds on gloss units and in the utility room.

The architect also used quality timbers in floors and doors, putting in teak French double doors in a range of rooms across the now-dormer bungalow’s L-shape in the private back garden, including from two of the bedrooms.

There’s now a choice of up to four ground-floor bedrooms (two are en suite), plus two good-sized, dormer, first-floor level ones, each with good en suites.

And the builder, Richard McCoy, also added four, feature, dome-topped, green, copper-clad dormer windows, while doing the first floor, which added c 600 sq ft to the original Glenora’s floor area.

It’s got great living areas, too, at ground, with a bright kitchen/dining room with overhead domed rooflights, and the utility also has a roof light, with guest WC off, while the main family bathroom has a raised bath with solid timber surround.

Separately, there’s a den/library with French doors to the mature, and private landscaped back garden (done by Frances Collins)

, but the piece de resistance is the large, party sized main reception room, with white marble fire surround and seating area, along with twin sets of French doors (done by Munster Joinery) to the garden/patio.

In keeping with the use of good woods in the first year-long 2000s upgrade, internal doors are in cedar, done by SouthWood Joinery, while bathroom tiling came from Richardsons, working well visually with the last occupants’ largely antique furniture mix in dark woods.

Coming now to a 2025 market as an executor sale (the very well-known Dr McKenna died in January, predeceased by his wife, Miní, in 2018), the detached and enlarged Glenora’s in excellent order, with a C3 BER, on pristine grounds facing The Paddocks.

New owners might want to do a further round of updates/décor changes to suit personal tastes, but the bones and space and materials used are all good for starters.

VERDICT: In the past 25 years, Glenora has itself spanned the age scale of occupants, from older people through a brief period of ownership by a design-savvy single man, to prior use as a childcare centre.

Betting now is that it’s going to be home for a long period for a younger family, possibly traders-up from the wider Douglas/Rochestown/Maryborough catchment, or to native Corkonians returning from elsewhere and looking for a Cork home in great good health.