{"id":448942,"date":"2026-05-14T18:57:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/448942\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T18:57:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:57:15","slug":"house-of-the-week-architect-jim-carroll-left-a-lovely-legacy-in-sundays-well-at-e575k-carriglee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/448942\/","title":{"rendered":"House of the Week: Architect Jim Carroll left a lovely legacy in Sunday’s Well at \u20ac575k Carriglee"},"content":{"rendered":"

BUILDERS and engineers rubbed shoulders in the busy parade of viewings this fine Sunday\u2019s Well home generated when it last came to
market around 30 years ago with a \u20ac60,000-plus guideline. Propertyknows this because the house featured in these pages when it was put up for auction in 1998. The successful bidder was a woman whose trump card was the architect she had up her sleeve.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved Carriglee from the very first moment I saw it and Jim Carroll, the architect who looked at it for me, completely fell for it too, even though it was an absolute wreck,\u201d the owner says.<\/p>\n

Mr Carroll was hired to work his magic, which he duly did, re-imagining the form and function of the three-story home as a sort of modern-day duplex, without compromising its heritage a jot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Carriglee,Carriglee, pictured centre, has a duplex layout<\/p>\n

A perfectionist, he went to painstaking lengths to keep it true to itself, right down to replacing a small coloured glass pane in a bathroom door with the exact cobalt blue hue of the original.<\/p>\n

\"RestoredRestored banisters and a glimpse of the feature window with cobalt panes<\/p>\n

Original banisters inside the entrance hall were
restored too, while a beyond-repair staircase to the upper level was replicated with the assistance of Cecil Whitford of Whitford Woodturning Designs Ltd, a former construction studies classmate of Jim\u2019s at what was then the Regional Technical College (RTC) in Cork.<\/p>\n

A real passion project for the architect, he restored original floorboards, shutters and sash windows, and exposed feature yellow brick hidden in the walls.<\/p>\n

\"ExposedExposed yellow brick in the double en suite bedroom under the eaves<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s visible now in the double en-suite bedroom under the eaves and also in the lower hallway, next to the main bedroom.<\/p>\n

The owner says the yellow brick \u201ccame from ships used to transport butter\u201d when Cork was a significant exporter. The bricks were used as ballast on the return journey, stashed in the hold where the butter had been stored, hence the buttery colour.<\/p>\n

\"AA door the size of a certain No 10\"TuscanTuscan redbrick courtyard<\/p>\n

A courtyard inside the Downing Street-sized door off Sunday\u2019s Well Road was rebuilt in Tuscan redbrick, picking up on heritage buildings in the neighbourhood, while on the south-facing side, above the river, is a patio and terraced garden, from where you can hear the weir in the river below.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

The owner has documents that date the house to c 1846 when a chap by the name of Andrew Waugh bought the land from the McDonald family with plans to build five houses \u2014 but died before he could finish them.<\/p>\n

They were subsequently completed on behalf of his widow, Eliza Waugh. Tragically, Jim Carroll didn\u2019t get to complete his work either at No 29 Sunday\u2019s Well Road.<\/p>\n

\"SouthSouth facing living room<\/p>\n

Although the upper floors \u2014 the \u2018duplex\u2019 section \u2014 are finished to the nth degree, Jim passed away suddenly and never got to finish out the lower floor apartment.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"UnfinishedUnfinished upper floor of the apartment with box bay window<\/p>\n

The rest of the house is superb, from the 20-year-old enduringly modern
German SieMatic kitchen, to the luxury Italian Bisazza mosaic tiling in the bathrooms, to the stunning feature window inside the front door that brings the evening light in, through tiny panes of vivid cobalt and clear glass.<\/p>\n

\"SieMaticSieMatic kitchen\"\"\"\"\"BisazzoBisazzo tiling<\/p>\n

Other thoughtful touches \u2014 decorative and practical \u2014 dot the house, such as alcoves and lighting exactly where you need them to be.<\/p>\n

\"ViewView from Carriglee<\/p>\n

Robert O\u2019Keeffe of Irish & European is handling the sale and given the quality of the property and its location \u2014 close to UCC, the Bon Secours, and Cork University Hospitals \u2014 he expects to see medics and academics.<\/p>\n

\n VERDICT: Hopefully the buyer will follow the\u00a0architect\u2019s lead and finish out the house as meticulously, whether they decide to incorporate the basement and overhead space \u2014 with a box bay window that\u2019s crying out for restoration \u2014 or whether they press ahead with the plan for an apartment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Either way, the house stands as a lasting legacy of Jim Carroll\u2019s architectural vision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUILDERS and engineers rubbed shoulders in the busy parade of viewings this fine Sunday\u2019s Well home generated when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,626,61,60],"class_list":["post-448942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-house-prices-mortgages-estate-agents-cork-munster","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}