Suburban house has class past history

THERE’S history aplenty at Sheares Villa – but what of its future?

The now-suburban house was a private secondary school in the latter 1900s, but long before that was the one-time family home of United Irishmen John and Henry Sheares, whose father, also John, was a wealthy banker and represented the Borough of Clonakilty in the English Parliament.

John snr was a partner in the bank Rogers, Travers and Sheares, on what is now called Sheares Street in Cork city centre. Some of the family was reared in this 1700s-built faded elegant villa on Cork city’s Glasheen Road which was then countryside, and John and Henry Sheares became politically radicalised after a spell visiting France during revolutionary times. The Sheares brothers, who became barristers, later lived in Dublin and ultimately were both betrayed, charged with treason for their part in the 1798 Rebellion, and were hanged at the end of that year.