Water’s edge site an attractive opportunity

SITES don’t come with much more rarity value than this one, an acre-plus at the water’s edge on Castle Road, near Cork’s harbour landmark Blackrock Castle.

It is a site with a distant and recent past: originally occupied by Brighton House Hotel and adjoining outdoor swimming baths, it also was home to a city merchant family in the 1900s before slowly going to dereliction and demolition.

Planning was sought in the late 1990s for an apartment scheme here, just beneath road level, but the scale of ambition ran into objections and the project stalled.