Rip Van Winkle terraced home back from slumber
THIS might well be the cheapest house for sale to appear in this coveted four-page property slot — because, compact and all as it is, it’s a case of best goods coming in small parcels.
A renewed home brand new to market, No 4 Parkowen is within a ten minute walk of Cork city centre off Evergreen Road and Quaker Road. It’s a place where time appears to have stopped, although it has ever so gently been brought up to date by a caring owner, who is full of knowledge and appreciation for older homes.
No 4’s a Rip Van Winkle spot, awoken in the past ten years from decades of previous gentle slumber in which the only thing that stirred was the gossamer spread of cobwebs.
But, that utterly original status (down to outside loo in the back yard) when last sold meant that when Scotsman Alistair Rowan bought it back in 2001, No 4 it had all of its original features intact, and he was very best man for making the very most of his wee purchase.
Back then, he’d just been taken on to establish the new Art History programme at UCC — head-hunted at age 62! His previous experience had included being the first Professor of Art History in UCD, and later principal of Edinburgh College of Art.
Before that, as part of a varied career with a visual flair, he’d studied architecture for a time and had become an architectural historian, having written on the topic for Country Life magazine back in the 1960s. Now retired, Prof Rowan is a former president of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and of the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland — a lot of big titles for the vendor of a small city house.
Aah, but it’s quite perfectly formed, Prof Rowan is likely to exclaim of his Cork project, done to accommodate and amuse himself while down south.
Rather than rent a house while working in UCC, he had decided to buy modestly somewhere between the college and the rail station so he could easily get back to his rather grander main Dublin residence. When he chanced on Cork’s Parkowen, it completely fitted the bill, and he now leaves it in its best health ever.
It comes up for sale with Trish Stokes of Lisney, who guides it at €165,000 — and who says it is as sweet and practical a city pad as a buyer might wish for. She’s going to be busy with viewings, guaranteed.
Parkowen was planned as “a delightful miniature estate of 20 Edwardian houses back in 1909 by a local solicitor, George Bowring Horgan, who’d leased three acres, on the crown of a hill at Quaker Road.
“In many ways it was a far-sighted scheme,” says Rowan, “the site was on open ground, falling gently to the north, with wide views across the city to the line of hills rising above the Lee.”
The land bordered the burial ground of a medieval church, dedicated to St. John, hence Park Owen, a name carried on a lead-lettered stone plaque at the cul de sac’s entrance, high up on the wall of No 1.
The architect’s name hasn’t been recorded, but “there can be no question that the houses were designed by someone who had received a professional training and who understood how carefully chosen, yet inexpensive, details can give distinction to a scheme. The architecture is in the manner of the Arts and Crafts movement fashionable in Britain in the later years of the 19th century,” approves No 4’s owner, custodian and perhaps saviour.
By the time of the 1911 census, 13 of these planned 20 houses had been built, and all in the terrace were finished by 1913.
Looking back now, when convenient and compact houses like this are generally market-pitched at singles, couples, or small families, what’s notable is just how many people had lived here in earlier times — and just how many had a domestic servant as well, who would have slept in a recess in the tiny scullery.
Back in 1911, No 4’s tenants were a James and a Josephine Harold, their two sons and two daughters, and a servant, Norah Farley (the census form records her as Falrey.) No 3 alongside had five residents, plus a maid, while No 5 had three generations of one family, ironically enough called Bakers, given that there was a dozen or so of them!
These houses were built “for letting to families ‘in modest circumstances’ and their layout and design demonstrates certain concerns that were considered important in the thinking of the time. Hygiene and good ventilation of domestic buildings came high in these priorities as did a certain sense of decorum which held that working people had a right to live in a house that would support their self-esteem,” notes Rowan
So, this meant things like a kitchen around which family life hearthily revolved, plus a separate sitting room to entertain callers — the good room, or parlour or old.
Here, the original sitting room which opens directly off the hall (with a four-panelled door) now also has direct, double door access to the rear kitchen. Leaving these salvaged (courtesy of O’Sheas builders,) painted pine double doors open increases the sense of space and light for today’s occupants at No 4, while the adjacent rear, time-piece back room now opens in turn to a tiny but pretty garden/yard with jasmine and other climbing scented plants.
Kept in situ are the original floor tiles in the back room and in the entrance hallway, all the craft joinery, the weighted sash windows, restored front door with new stained glass inserts, plasterwork, the original kitchen range (working, but ornamental now that there’s a new kitchen behind where the scullery was) and the houses’s several fireplaces, such as the buffed-up cast-iron mantelpiece, with original glazed tiles.
Two of No 4’s bedrooms also have fireplaces, simple cast iron ones, and the third of the first floor’s rooms is a tiny bedroom, nursery or dressing room/study. But, it’s there, and it is a room.
No 4 is bigger than it first appears from the roadside, thanks to a seamlessly added rear annexe. As the roof over the original scullery (cold tap, old sink, and WC by the yard) was falling in, Alistair Rowan rowed in here, making way for a ground floor galley kitchen, with a guest WC beyond, and overhead he also managed to work in a decent-sized proper bathroom, complete with shower, sink and bidet, luxury quite unknown when the house was first built. This bit of extra space also help raise the total floor area to around 1,000 sq ft.
No 4 has all of its original sash windows, and the one removed from the back wall to make way for the slender French doors with side panels has found a new home upstairs on the landing — all good architectural conservation practice. Things like open fires and old sash windows won’t help No 4 get a good BER rating, though, and one of the first jobs a new owner might want to do is insulate the attic, reached via pull-down stairs. And, while up here in the attic, check how much accessible extra space is available, easy to upgrade to storage, home office or more with a roof light to the back. There’s also great brickwork apparent on the side party walls for the chimneys.
Out front of No 4, the lower section’s brickwork has been painted, but some of the adjoining houses (especially the pretty No 3 which also has sash windows) have the original finish — sandblasting No 4’s bricks would lift it up further. Also, the facade at 4 has kept the decorative perforated bricks, which allow fresh air into the floor joists internally, while keeping the skirting boards a quarter inch or more off the floorboards ensured ventilation and a draught for the upstairs fireplaces to draw from.
No 4’s previous owner was a John Becher, one of two brothers reared in this home, and the family had rented here since the 1920s, and bought it in 1977 for £1,250. Mr Becher was well-known as a pigeon fancier, breeder and judge, who kept his racing birds’ loft across the roadway at Parkowen where the original garden (now separately owned) was.
Later on, after his brother Dick Becher who used transport the birds to the rail station (Cork to Thurso in Scotland was a favourite flight path) died, John Becher took to breeding canaries. He died in 2000, aged 78, having changed nothing at all in his home, bar the introduction of a colour TV for watching Wimbledon.
Now, after Alistair Rowan’s period of ownership at No 4, it makes for a fascinating bit of local, social and architectural history. There’s the slightest sense of living in a small museum or gallery, thanks to the age-appropriate furniture, decor and some of the art work, but that’s only a welcoming illusion. There’s now central heating, working fireplaces, two bathrooms, an immaculate interior and a clever, functional layout with every inch utilised, and the city centre and amenities are as close as they were a century ago when cul de sac Parkowen with its greens was first laid out.
VERDICT: With his researches, and handiwork, vendor Professor Rowan has done the terrace, the house, and its next owners, some service.
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