Bellevue is more than a house — it’s a slice of Cork’s past reimagined for €875k

Modern five-bedroom home sits within historic walled orchard grounds, offering harbour views, character features and development potential

An aerial view of the front of ‘Bellevue’ in Glenbrook, Passage West, showing the expansive site and elevated setting overlooking Cork Harbour. Pictures Chani Anderson

Glenbrook, Cork Harbour
€875,000
Size	237 sq m (2,540 sq ft) on 2.43 acres
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	C2

There are deep links to the past at Cork Harbour’s Bellevue, a modern “replacement” home overlooking the Lee and the cross-river ferry, on utterly private grounds, cocooned inside the brick-walled former orchard grounds of the long vanished original period villa Bellevue.

Built over 40 years ago, today’s Bellevue pays due deference to the past in the integration of old and salvaged items, such as an expanse of extraordinary polished clay floor tiles, as well as old antiques, signage, and reclaimed immaculate old pine furniture (more on this, anon).

Just like the original which give this Belleuve setting its name, this fine family home has engaging and always shifting water views.

Various spellings and iterations of Bellevue, Belview, Bell View (meaning beautiful view) crop up even locally around Cork City and harbour, on individual homes and terraces and period home pairings.

Glenbrook’s original is likely to have originated in the 19th century, back at a time when wealthy merchant families built homes in salubrious settings, either by the seaside/riverside, or the heights of the hills along Sunday’s Well and Tivoli.

In the case of Glenbrook, Passage West, and Monkstown, the harbour setting proved hugely popular for shipping and boat building, cargo handling, and it saw a surge in health-related tourism through the likes of hydrotherapy, sea-bathing, and fashionable baths.

Although today the area is host still to a range of impressive Victorian and other era period homes of substance (as is Cobh/Great Island across the river), little is known or remembered about Glenbrook’s Bellevue other than its appearance on place maps and the occasional, very rare, property sale.

Enter Bellevue Mark 11, built by locally born man Michael (Mike) Dwyer who had grown up in the substantial 1826-built Carrigmahon House.

Carrigmahon was built as a maritime residence for a Limerick yachtsman, and featured in these pages in 2012 when last changing hands with a €1.25m AMV.

A member of the Dwyer family which had been one of Cork City’s largest employers in the 1800s — with at one time thousands of employees manufacturing hosiery, clothing, shoes etc across acres of factories by Washington Street —Mike Dwyer was one of five brothers who also loved boats and the sea, having grown up right by the water.

A sailor all his life in dinghies and larger craft, the late Mr Dwyer — who passed away two years ago — spotted the chance to build a brand new home, now called Bellevue, for his own family decades ago when he was able to buy several walled acres, with old stables and courtyard, at the wooded glen at Glenbrook Terrace, a few hundred yards from Carrigmahon Hill.

Another overlap with “old Cork” came in the guise of Mike Dwyer’s use of a very long established architectural firm, William H Hill & Son, to design his Bellevue — with architect Bill Brady heading the venerable Cork practice at the time.

Robustly built in blocks, without airs and graces, Bellevue spans 237 sq m, or just under 2,500 sq ft, with five first-floor bedrooms (one en suite with bath).

Most have water glimpses or, as compensation, wooded glen and mature orchard views.

WH Hill’s well-conceived floor plan allowed for a small number of generous-sized ground-floor rooms, thus there’s a 24’ by 10’ hall with guest WC off; a carpeted 20’ by 17’ dual aspect living room with brick fireplace; a 20’ by 19’ kitchen/breakfast room with Rangemaster oven and utility room off; plus, for the best views and light, the slightly stepped down 19’ by 15’ lounge/sunroom, with glazing on three sides and patio access, with two Veluxes in the solid roof, cosied up by a wood burning stove.

What ties much of the house together and gives it additional character is the quality and lustre of the hand-made tiles in the hall, kitchen/breakfast room, and ancillary room.

They could be a century or two old, salvaged and repurposed, or some more recent artisan output, but they are magnificent no matter what the origin.

This writer recalled seeing them, once, in the 1980s, and the memory of their rare quality remained until this month’s revisit for sale purposes, when they still impress.

Notable too is the range of natural materials in the build and furnishing, including doors and stairs, with an abundance of old, stripped pine, including standalone items such as dressers and sideboards.

There’s a reason for the range of curated pieces: For a number of years, Mike Dwyer and his brother Joey started and ran the Pine Pitch — initially rescuing and rebuilding old Irish pine and country furniture, stripping centuries of paint and finishing, polishing, and selling the old beauties as the 1980s’ demand for stripped pine reigned.

The Pine Pitch had started in an old shed premises by Hanover St, with long Dwyer roots, and later premises included Washington St and Emmet Place, where new pine furniture sales mixed with the old.

Back home, there’s the abundance of art, family photographs, and original paintings — many done by Mike’s mother Mary Dwyer.

Others are by his late wife, Bridget, who died in 2014 and whose art studio is still standing in this well-tended home’s orchard grounds in a 20 sq m timber chalet which is currently a carpentry workshop.

Lichen-covered fruit trees here long predate this Bellevue, spanning cookers, eaters, and “rock hard” pears.

The site’s 0.6 acres of garden with many, many thousands of old bricks in walls, arches and outbuildings is entirely special on a scale of grandeur unlikely to ever be repeated again in any 21st-century build.

The 0.6 acres of walled, sloping garden is tended by a robot mower.

Next door, on the larger site, something far more powerful might be called for to tame rampant overgrowth...?

Listed with estate agent Tim Sullivan, Bellevue’s full property offer spans 2.43 acres, with the 1.83 “non-garden” segment currently home to a wooded glen or glade/rain forest that, today, would be hard to get the measure of — bar from the air — such has been the rampant, unchecked growth.

Just about accessible, though, are the old stable block and country outbuildings which did some Pine Pitch service several decades ago. They are now disused, but beguiling perhaps as a project?

There had been two previous, successful planning grants for limited development in this 1.83 acre area (now lapsed) for three mews-like houses and one detached dwelling.

Auctioneer Tim Sullivan guides the entire property at €875,000, reckoning many home hunters who’ll be keen on Bellevue might like to control the full amount of ground.

However, he says he may be prepared to sell in lots if interest comes round more this way.

(Visitors this spring to Bellevue will see a new house under construction, slightly lower down on old Bellevue lands, on a 0.69ac site sold two years ago by an unrelated vendor for a price in low-to-mid €200,000s)

Here, the additional 1.83ac plot with Bellevue “is a great asset and addition to the overall property, either for amenity use or future low density development subject to planning”, says Mr Sullivan.

VERDICT: A newish slice of old Cork, mixing the old with the new, on an exceptional walled and historic Glenbrook site with luscious and leafy Lee views down to the comings and goings of the cross-river ferry and the boat store now on the Rushbrooke/Carrigaloe side.

Ahoy, even landlubbers welcome at this sale.