Period charm inside and out
OVER the past month, for early morning risers, it’s all been about the amazing dawn chorus, with competing choirs of chattering birds giving lusty throat to the start of day.
But, hark, what’s that song, what rare bird might that shrieking be? Hey, hey, it’s the ....monkeys.
Monkeys? Indeed. Thanks to the way sound travels easily over water, the homes at Toureen Terrace in Cork harbour’s Passage West get regular jungle-beat updates from Fota Wildlife Park a couple of miles away to the north east.
Weird, but true “and we also get regular birdsong as well,” says noted interior designer Sara Murphy in the midst of her garden terrace greenery.
She has recently put her terraced home 3 Toureen Terrace in Passage West up for sale, after 17 years in hands-on residence.
In the life of most homes, that’s a fair chunk of time, but as this terrace of over a dozen houses is just shy of 200 years of age (it’s 1820s, its owner who specialises in period homes, reckons), well, she’s barely been passing through.
Aha, but Ms Murphy has left her mark, lightly, but rightly so, and the result — displayed here — is a home done on a modest budget, over time, but looking absolutely well (and age-appropriate,) for its vintage. It’s charm, personified, inside and out, with deft designer touches, and daubs of good taste and bright, brash art.
With family reared and moved on, Ms Murphy’s three-storey Georgian-meets-Victorian mid-terraced property has lots of characterful space for its quoted €325,000 AMV via agent Barry Smith of Marian Rose Properties.
After some early positive viewings, Mr Smith says it’s “a refreshing change to find such a charismatic property, with so many original features retained. It truly is like stepping back in time when you enter and wander through.”
It’s not been over-done, that’s the good news for those who really want their period properties to ‘feel’ real, to have that patina of age, plus heaps of original features inside and out. No 3 is all this, and more.
It has original doors, floors, windows, shutters, fireplaces (one is replaced, and an improvement), a retained old bread oven in the kitchen, as well as gardens front and back which have harbour views, and an over-arching, timeless air.
Yet, it has been re-roofed as “the most important thing you can do for an old house is to keep the rain and water out,” observes the knowledgeable, self-taught designer, whose other mantra is “to leave a house breath, don’t seal it all up so that it suffocates.”
So this house breathes naturally — there’s even a picturesque small, multi-paned window on the upper landing that has long-since been painted shut, or almost shut; it’s got a slender gap to allow air through, by accident, or by design, but in any case, good practice.
No 3’s originality goes so far as to not yet have central heating, but there are some electric storage heaters and lots of fireplaces.
Even before coming to the mauve-painted front door, No 3 starts to sell its own wares: it faces directly to the River Lee and harbour by the now defunct Marino Point, with long views to the inner harbour, and the Marino tower at Fota is itself a marker. Shipping traffic going to the city quays sails or steams serenely past, while next weekend the Cork Harbour Ocean to City race will see flotillas of human propelled fine craft and some flotsam passing by Toureen Terrace.
These terraced homes on Cork Road have an ace up their sleeves, or at least up the steep hill to Marmullane behind them, which handily grants rear access to the back gardens. Some in the terrace have old garages, mews-in-waiting back here, but No 3 has had its back store cleared away.
No 3 has a long, uphill back garden, overgrown to be sure, but with good bones, hefty stone flagstone steps and a sense of the tameable outback. At its foot is a west-facing sun-trap stone-flagged and graveled private terrace, almost Continental in feel when the sun lurks around before midday, and this space, just off the back kitchen, is home to several al fresco seating and dining niches among potted plants, ferns and climbing roses, honeysuckle and other scented plants.
Hop back around to the front garden, and there’s more outside seats, decking and deck chairs, with river views. And, thanks to its elevation up a small flight of steps from the road (where there’s easy parking) there’s privacy too, enhanced by a bower-like entrance arch of birch and other pendulous plants.
Enough to-ing and fro-ing, now to the interior — and, it’s what you’d expect and more.Well, given the owner’s an accomplished and well-recognised designer, you’d assume it’ll look good, but the look here is one of a slow evolution, of things finding their natural place over time, of looks and bits of furniture from different periods, and even countries getting on well together, even when cheek by jowl, with bold contemporary art next to an artefact that might be 200 years old.
When Sara Murphy bought No 3 Toureen Terrace it was in poor order with a pokey back room “like the black hole of Calcutta.” Now, that previous back black hole is a kitchen (of sorts) flooded with light which pours in through French doors to the back garden terrace, and on the other side it has been opened out to the main dining room, with eight mis-matched chairs around a long dining table, and with walls painted an easy-on-the-eye dark grey, going with the grey marbled fireplace. Lightening the look are the cream-painted old pine floor boards. As in so many other parts of the house, using large mirrors judiciously helps increase the sense of light and space, and there’s a whopper of a sideboard mirror with a modern glass shelf underneath it to hold CDs and a music player as a sort of modern counterpoint to the gilt tripping above.
The hallway, like the kitchen, is floored in travertine, wearing down with use and ageing gracefully, and the main 17’ by 13’ drawing room has its floor in hard-wearing natural sisal. This room’s open fireplace is a salvage job from another house, and the back wall has been fully-shelved for books (lots of designer pattern books and stuff), and this shelving has a door ope to a rear little study with panelled walls.
No 3 has kept a pleasant air of faded antiquity; not all is shiny and new, and the back kitchen is a bit of an oddity — “my friends joke that I have practically no kitchen,” laughs the owner, leaning over a kitchen island that gives a lie to the assertion, housing as it does a large gas range for cooking, and a travertine tiled work top for food prepping. There’s a simple sink/drainer and dishwasher set in an alcove, and to the left is a display area making a feature of a very old built-in brick bread oven.
Walls here are kept simple, painted white, and large art works explode the place into vibrant colourful life. A pair of simple French doors lead to a full-width rear patio and terrace, decked out with fragrant climbing plants and pot plants, with fern-strewn steps leading to the long gardens climbing out and up to the back, to the optional rear entrance.
The house’s lower level includes a pantry, and trot up the stairs and the first floor has three bedrooms, plus a French-themed bathroom with huge, free-standing cast iron bath with built-in linen closet.
As No 3 is a upstanding three storey period home, the top floor gives space for two more bedrooms, one very large and lit by roof Velux windows, interspersed among the feature exposed timber trusses (Protim treated) and the roof beyond has been re-slated for peace of mind.
There’s great harbour views from the front of house Velux, as well as from the main front bedrooms below through their Georgian-paned sash windows.
There’s hardly a corner of No 3 that hasn’t a quirk, or an invite to sit down and take it easy. The only challenge will be to introduce some modernising (eg central heating) and keeping the character which has been latterly been given back to it.
VERDICT: At €325,000 via Marian Rose Properties, No 3 Toureen Terrace is an affordable, period harbour home with natural garden and interior appeal.
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