Restored and set to house new generation

ONE of the oldest houses in Cork city, Carrigbarre, has been given a new lease of life.

Back with a colourful splash and a clean building bill of health from parapet to basement, it is set to provide accommodation for new generations. Having had perhaps as many as eight generation of owners and residents in its long history.

Dating back to the early 1700s and added to and changed throughout the centuries, the three storey tall merchants’ house predates the gothic confection of St Fin barre’s Cathedral by more than a century.

In fact in its lifetime it would have looked across Bishop Street at as many as three different cathedrals on this one historic spot.

While it has the glory of St Fin barre’s in front, right behind it has the treasure of the Church of Ireland’s Bishops Palace (home to Bishop Paul Colton and family).

Carrigbarre and its own half acre of walled gardens was sold at auction three years ago, when it was bought for over £400,000 by builder Bobby Hilliard and Micheal O Crualaoi. Buying it proved to be the easy part, it has swallowed cash since, helpfully provided by ICC bank who must be deeply relieved at seeing the house coming so smartly to rights, ready to rent and to repay its way.

Its owners spent the interim few years from rash auction purchase meeting strict planning and protected building conservation conditions to ensure the heritage house’s safe conservation, and at times up to thirty workers were on site, many of them trained in specialist building skills.

Bobby Hilliard’s brother Mark did a specialist course in lime plastering as part of the learning on the job, another brother Nicky did all the painting in lime washes and heritage colours, and then the rest of the family just sort of rowed in as well.

Bobby’s parents Joe and Phil were in from the start (Phil advised him not to touch the house with a bargepole!) and also drafted in on different stages of the graft was sister Linda, Bobby’s Swedish-born wife Maria who does their building business’ books, and their young sons Robert and Jonathan also got the hard hat treatment.

“It has all been done to best conservation practice,” acknowledges architect Gareth O’Callaghan, who works with Jack Coughlan Associates; 80% of that company’s business is now in the conservation sector and they also act as consultants to the Heritage Council.

The protracted renewal job had the input of planners from the start, and then Cork City Council’s facilitiative conservation officer Pat Ruane got involved, bringing in architect Gareth O’Callaghan and from then on the project began to flow.

Builder and developer Bobby Hilliard, who had worked on several other old buildings in Cork city, was given permission to build four new student accommodation houses in the grounds of the original house. This practical concession helped make the costly conservation project on the main house financially viable.

The student houses, built to resemble a row of coachhouses, mix old materials like slate roofs with a fresh design overseen again by Gareth O’Callaghan.

Features here include copper clad dormers, Rational windows, aluminium pipes and gutters, the same bold yellow ochre colour as the main house, and wood decking behind with some incredible cathedral views from their large plate glass windows.

The main house, meanwhile, was reskinned with lime plaster and lime colour washed over this; the original windows were conserved by craftsman Johannes Kuom who saved much of the old glass as well, Design Warehouse took care of the very old staircase, and the expansive roof area with numerous valleys was done in old slate, with cast iron gutters and chutes.

The original hall and landing decorative wall panelling is a relatively unusual deep plaster, a style known as raised field - this quite formal work was originally thought to have been wood panelling. (A working sketch of the original staircase was found marked in pencil on this plasterwork - it is worth remembering it was pencilled in by a craftsman over 250 years ago.

Door frames have sturdy square shoulders or lugged architraves, and the house has an immensely graceful rear bay, with French doors from the living room to the gardens.

The total scheme has come to a hefty 2.2 million euro, and this includes building the terrace of four sleekly styled student units, each with six en suite bedrooms, conversion of the rear annexe to accommodation and, most importantly, conservation of the main house.

In all, the Carrigbarre complex will see up to 46 people in residence in the mix of new and old. UCC, keenly snapping up quality units for the coming academic year has contracted to take the student units at 100 per week.

However, after all the years of graft and close attention to preserving architectural detailing, Bobby Hilliard is understandably keen to have older people, the ubiquitous ‘professionals’ in the house.

: the notion of a student rave in Carrigbarre itself gives him nightmares.

He hopes to get six professionals in to house share.

“I want people to treat it like a home,” he says protectively.

The layout of Carrigbarre includes communal living room, kitchen and dining area, while there are six highly individual bedrooms, some with sloping ceilings, others with cornice work, most with captivating views glimpsed through old windows, but each with its own en suite bathroom.

Carrigbarre’s plan, agreed by owners, planners and architect, was to keep the house’s character as original as possible: converting it to offices after a lifetime of residential use would have meant far greater intervention with fire lobbies etc breaking up its flow.

It took time, and a measure of grief but then again what’s a few years’ work in the life of a building as old as this? “Yeah, I’d do it again in the morning,” says Bobby Hilliard.