UCC makes change to planning application for more 'faithful reinstatement' of Boole House

A computer-generated image of the refurbished building at 5 Grenville Place, the former home of George Boole, the father of modern coding and computing. UCC has previously said it intends the building to become an international landmark building highlighting Ireland's historic contribution to scientific advancement.

The long-awaited restoration of the historic Boole House in Cork city — the home for a time of the father of modern coding and computing — has moved a step closer with a more “faithful reinstatement” of the protected structure in the pipeline.

University College Cork (UCC) has lodged a planning application with Cork City Council seeking permission to relocate a proposed internal lift shaft at 5 Grenville Place, the home of George Boole from 1849 to 1855, the first professor of mathematics at Queen’s College, now UCC.

A UCC spokesman said it hopes to tender later this year for the restoration of the property it has owned since 2017.

“UCC has applied to relocate a proposed lift within the building, with the remaining original plans unchanged. UCC hopes to tender works for this restoration project later this year,” he said.

The house, a very important structure in the architectural heritage of the city, was in vacant and poor condition when it suffered a partial internal collapse in 2010.

It was placed on the city’s derelict sites register and in 2012, the city council commissioned a report to guide potential approaches to its conservation and restoration.

In 2015, the council legally secured ownership of the property and embarked on a Part 8 planning process with UCC, to be advanced in two stages, completing stabilisation and consolidation works in 2017, following which UCC assumed sole ownership of the property.

The second phase included further conservation and renovation measures along with the internal fit-out of the building over four floors.

A portrait of George Boole (1815- 1864), a largely self-taught mathematician who while at Queen's College, Cork, in 1847 developed a new form of algebra, the Boolean algebra, in an attempt to link the disciplines of mathematics and formal logic. His work was essential to the development of digital computers and also applied to other fields such as statistics and probability.

UCC has previously said it intends the building to become an international landmark building highlighting Ireland's historic contribution to scientific advancement but six years on, the restoration has yet to take place.

But this week, UCC lodged a planning application seeking a modification to the already granted Part 8 planning to relocate an internal passenger lift to a rear extension.

The move is designed to “restore the integrity of the ground and first-floor layouts to reinstate a semblance of the historic plan”, reports in the planning file say.

A report by architects from JCA says removing the lift core from the centre of the plan, and thereby freeing up the main body of the existing building, will have a major positive impact on the “legibility of the original building”.

They said moving it may have a slight negative impact on a rear yard but that would be balanced by its removal from the more sensitive interior of the existing building.