Home with a heart is heaven sent

A stunning Victorian home is back on the market after 27 years care. Tommy Barker finds some divine inspiration in the Old Rectory.

WHEN The Old Rectory, on Cork’s Blackrock Road, last changed hands some 27 years ago, its sale at auction made the news pages of this paper. We billed the six-figure sum achieved as the most expensive house ever sold in the southern ‘capital.’

Then, back in the depressed mid-’80s, the fortunate purchasers went and put the same amount of money again as they’d spent in acquiring the Rectory into its upgrades. They put in a kitchen, several bedroom en suite bathrooms, heated it, laid out its gardens to the gracious standard they now are, and generally treated it all with due respect and design deference, whilst making it suitable for a new generation, with higher expectations of comfort.