A little drama in the Glen

Tommy Barker visits a terraced cottage in a popular harbour-side town.

PREPARE for a touch of drama when you duck through the doors at the village-like cottage at 2, the Glen, in Cork harbour’s Monkstown.

The diminutive cottage opens up its terraced back garden with lots and lots of planting and the perch to view it all from is a raised veranda/deck across the back.

A bit of drama comes too from the owner, Austrian woman Lida Lefevre who wrote plays, scripts and soaps for Continental European radio, TV and the stage, with 20 years of output coming from this unlikely writer’s eyrie.

“Delighted by the tax exemption for artists, I moved to Dublin first and later on to Cork where I bought a derelict cottage, this one which I transformed on and on,” says Lida who has moved back to Vienna where she has work currently being performed on stage at the Vienna Volk theatre.

“Before I came, people said the Irish were eccentric, and I think you have lived up to that description,” she laughs.

After a builder did a repair on the roof at one early stage, it leaked so Lida put a glass bowl underneath it to catch the drops and called the builder to fix the problem. “He told me I should get a goldfish.”

With Lida’s move back to Austria, to grandchildren and roots, 2 The Glen (minus any need for a goldfish bowl) is for sale with David Hogan of Oakridge Properties in Cork city, who guides the small but sweet pad at €230,000 - the price of a small apartment.

No 2 is mid-terraced, and is sandwiched between its neighbours in the Glen, which is a stone’s throw from the sand quay in Monkstown, a popular place for dinghy launching and storage, with the harbour at your feet and a golf course and hilly walk to your back via the Glen.

Views of the sea are snatched from the roof veranda, and the garden planting beneath is quite rockery and woodland in character, with interlopers including pampas and perennials.

The cottage has been well-kept and steadily upgraded, and will appeal to owner-occupiers looking for an affordable starter or easily managed and comfortable home, while some investor interest may also materialise, says Mr Hogan.

Space at ground level takes in hall and store room with tiled floors, a kitchen/living room almost 15’ by 15’, with breakfast bar and oak kitchen units plus fireplace, a narrow dining room with painted wood floor, and this room has a sliding door to the garden, there’s a shower room with stained glass window, and the first floor is via a spiral staircase and has two bedrooms, one currently used as an office, and there’s an en suite bathroom upstairs as well.