Mount Alto has bird’s eye views

IDEAL for captains of the high seas coming home to land, Mount Alto in Cobh has been home to captains of industry instead for the past decade or so — it has been a corporate let to MDs of businesses like Heineken and Centocor.

In fact, the Centocor biopharm boss who returns this month to the US after setting up the €500m Centocor Biologics 250,000 sq ft plant in Ringaskiddy back in 2005, could see his factory plant from his home, and vice versa, while the cross river ferry had him to his desk bright and early every day.

A large, Victorian Gothic house high above the Cork harbour town of Cobh, Mount Alto is the building equivalent of a boat’s crow’s nest perch. And, the views pick up with each of the four floors that you ascend to.