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.

Mount Alto faces due south and directly out the mouth of Cork harbour, with Roches Point light house at the mouth of the natural harbour directly ahead.

The water vista spans more than 180 degrees of the compass, from sun up over Whitegate to sun set over Monkstown: from this spot, you can track the sun all day long, or forecast the weather changes half an hour before they happen on the ground.

You can track just about all of Cork harbour’s shipping progress too, as ships pass beneath, hugging the harbour walls of Cobh, and regular passing traffic includes passenger ferries, cargo ships, and now, up to and over 50 pleasure cruise ships that visit Cobh and Cork each year. Throw in yachts and dinghies, and really, you’d nearly be afraid to leave the house in case you missed something.

Given Cobh/Queenstown’s long and proud maritime pat, present and future, this house really should be home to the Cork harbour pilots, 24/7.A 5,000 sq ft big detached home on a site of three quarters of an acre, Mount Alto is a period one-off, up on Glasson’s Avenue, very much outstanding in its own field — there isn’t another house of its calibre in the vicinity, as most of Cobh’s stunning Victorian housing stock is lower down in the town.

Built around 1860, for a salvage merchant family called Ensor, Mount Also has been a large family home for a number of different private owners, and about a decade ago was bought in poor order by a business duo, Justin Canty and Robert Power.

It was one of several houses they did up in the noughties, most of them aimed at the corporate rental market where rents topped €4,000 a month at peak.

They had Mount Alto very briefly up for sale, but then decided to let it in 2003 and it has been a consistent income producer ever since. Even though the housing market and values have been on a three-year slide, so too has the economy — and as a result the demand for quality rentals has dived too.

Mount Also is now a new market arrival for summer 2010 with Jarlath Boyd of Savills, who seeks offers around €1.5 million.

The air is pretty thin right now at that price level, and truth be told there’ll only be a handful of €1m-plus sales in Cork this year (2009 had maybe half a dozen?).

If Mount Alto makes it into this league it will be because, well, the views say it all, and will end up selling it sooner or later too.

The character-full basement level alone has 1,400 sq ft, with feature exposed stone walls, snooker room, wine cellar, large laundry and play area/gym, with garden access under a pergola.

The main/upper ground floor has three great reception rooms: the biggest one is 40’ wide across the full house width with six matching arched windows, opening to a broad 400 sq ft viewing terrace.

Those arched windows, on three sides, frame the variety of views, while rooms behind are more intimate — but still larger and grander than in most Irish homes.

Then, there’s a side, west-facing sun-room corridor added on, there’s a study by the elegant stairs, and a modern kitchen, with painted units, granite tops, quality appliance and tumbled marble floors.

Floors almost throughout the rest of this level are in three-quarter inch thick oak, so between the forest of sawn solid oak, the wool carpets upstairs, and the tonnes of marble tiling for most of the seven bathrooms, you can seen a budget blown at the time of this house’s makeover a decade ago.

The place was considerably replumbed, so the requisites, like a very good master bedroom en suite, are provided with a feature sunken bath, even if you have to go up marble steps to sink back down into it.

Like a period hotel’s plushest suite, this room (with dressing room) also opens to it its own private balcony/wrap-around terrace.

There are five/six bedrooms in all, with two en suites, and the top floor has superlative sea views also from its front bedroom, as well as from side bedrooms, while the top level bathroom has a bath deliberately placed for west-facing sunsets, as well as glimpses over manicured neighbouring terraced houses’ gardens.

Mount Alto, now 150 years standing, still feels rock-solid and the reason is plain to see: sheer building quality and materials, in clear evidence from the basement’s limestone wall upwards.

Owners Messrs Canty and Power stripped the basement stone back when they realised its attractiveness, as well as peeling back decades of paint off the solid walnut stair handrail, they oversaw the kitchen upgrade, did the central heating and a whole host more jobs.

Now, as they decide to move on, a new owner can move straight in, but a first job might be to repaint outside walls and feature timber fascias. One can only imagine what the view must be like from a ladder, right up at roof top level. Periscope, anyone?