Monopoly board prices for Shrewsbury address — but, compared to Dublin, Cork's is 'affordable' at just over €1m

TYPE the salubrious address ‘Shrewsbury’ into the Property Price Register and, among the 350+ sales recorded, there are 59 that sold for more than €1m.

So far, 58 of those are in Dublin, where the Shrewsbury address for years featured on the Monopoly board game, along with Ailesbury Road, as Ireland’s premium residential addresses.

The ‘Baron of Ballsbridge’, Sean Dunne, paid €58m for an Edwardian beauty called Walford on Shrewsbury Road, for a property play that never proceeded. It last sold for €14.25m, around 2016, still set to be redeveloped, linked to Macroom-born Irish financier Dermot Desmond, who plans a replacement three times larger than the original.

That’s Dublin for you.

By comparison, Cork’s Shrewsbury, and the adjacent and subsequent Shrewsbury Downs, off the Ballinlough Road, is far more real.

Described as “an upscale residential development”, Shrewsbury Downs, at the Ballintemple end of the Ballinlough Road, was developed in the early to mid-1980s when money was in pretty short supply in the country and in the southern capital: Yet, there was a demand for good trade-up homes from those who’d made their money... or who were on their way to making it.

The Downs section at Shrewsbury came a decade or so after an earlier Shrewsbury-titled scheme of circa 16 detached homes, and in this case was designed to a sort of Georgian red-brick template, by Waterford-based architect John Santry, for Cork developer Dan Cahalane/Broomcourt Developments.

Similar-looking homes for the aspirational middle classes in Cork had been delivered already in the likes of old Mount Oval, in Rochestown, and on the Model Farm Road, again featuring colonial-style white columns and porticos, statements of intended grandeur.

In Shrewsbury Downs’s case, launch prices were in the Ir£100,000 price bracket, about double what other, more standard new Cork homes were selling for 40-odd years ago, and the development came to 28 detached houses in a cul de sac.

The cul de sac consists of a loop that can be circled, with houses ranged around the perimeter and more grouped in the middle, back to back, but on decent-sized sites. It means that eight or more can be described as corner properties, with sites shaped in various scales of wedges, either bigger to the back, or wider to the front, depending on whether they are ‘inner’ or ‘outer’ placed.

Top seller to date is No 7, which featured extensively here in 2023, over 3,000sq ft of top-quality interiors and B-rated, with a wide back garden and private pedestrian access even into the grounds of Cork Constitution RFC.

No 7 was guided at €1.2m (by agent Kevin Barry, who had family links to the property) and the Price Register shows it made €1.25m, pretty much in jig-time.

Now, it’s the turn of No 22 to come for sale, and the question is what side of the €1m price mark will it go for when it, too, comes in to next ownership?

Selling agent Brian Olden, of Cohalan Downing, admits he could have gone on the market in the mid-to-high €900,000s, or go with his instincts and price it just over €1m, pinning a €1.05m AMV to it.

The current owners have been here for 25 years, and the house has expanded, now weighing in at a not-inconsiderable 270sq m or c 2,900sq ft, with four first-floor bedrooms plus fifth at attic level, one en suite and with a very good ground-level range of rooms, across a wide home, on a good sized site.

“There’s a fantastic floor plan here, one of the best I’ve seen for years,” Mr Olden says. “It’s as good as you’d want for a busy family, and it’s exceptionally well finished and maintained inside.” 

The location, at the eastern/outer end of the Ballinlough road, puts it close to sports amenities like Páirc Ui Rinn, Ballinlough GAA club, Cork Constitution RFC, the park and pitch and putt at Beaumont quarry with Avondale soccer pitch, as well as being near Ballinlough Tennis Club, the Douglas swimming pool, and several open, green areas.

There’s a choice of primary and secondary schools within a walk, also, while Ballintemple village is only about a kilometre away, with the Marina and Páirc Ui Chaoimh close, too, past the new homes scheme Aylesbury on Churchyard Lane/Temple Hill, where the current top resale is No 4 ,which made €955,000 two years ago.

That’s almost another Monopoly board sort of sum too....

No 22 is on a well-landscaped site, and looks as good outside as inside, and there’s the bonus of a very good attic-level bedroom, with lots of accessible wide drawer storage built in the eaves, plus there’s a large patio to the back.

Cork’s Shrewsbury Downs scores in terms of location and services and privacy of setting, so it’s not very surprising there is so little ‘churn’ of these 40-year-old builds.

There’s been just five resales since 2010, rising from values of c €500k+ (eg €580,000 for No 16 that year) to €768,000 for No 4 in 2020, only topped by Lynbar/No 7 in 2024 at its headline-making €1.25m.

VERDICT: Busy families couldn’t ask for much better?