Tie up at the Marina

THEY don't build houses like they used to. The thought comes constantly to mind wondering around a place as fine as Memling.

This muscular home, on Cork's Marina and called after a 15th Century Flemish painter, has quality in spades, inside and out, and shows all the signs of careful ownership, on-going investment and discrete modernisation.

Edwardian in provenance, dating to just after 1900, and with mellowed brick, dash and some ornamental plasterwork it is one of just a dozen or so houses at the Blackrock village end of the Marina. Blackrock Castle is visible from the front gates and upstairs bedrooms, while Tivoli is across the river with its shoulder of still-largely wooded hills flanking behind.