Mansion with options

Built as a mansion home for celebrated architect Sir Thomas Deane, Cork’s suburban Dundanion House is an absolutely immaculate large period house which has had commercial uses for the past half-century.

Now, as it comes to the open market with a €2m price guide, it may continue to impress as a corporate HQ — or could make for an extraordinary private home.

Dating to the 1830s, Dundanion House is on the village end of the Blackrock Road, has 9,200 sq ft of space, on two main levels over lower ground floor rooms, and includes coach-house buildings with good rental income, all on three acres.

It last changed hands back in 1999, when it was bought by an investor from the then Department of Post and Telegraphs, who had run it as training centre since 1964.

Family occupants had included Sir Thomas Deane, McNamaras, Hennessys and Mocklers. The original grounds were cut through by the Cork and Passage railway in 1850, and this is now an amenity walkway, crossed over by a private bridge between Dundanion House and its 4,300 sq ft of converted coach-house buildings. The wooded grounds, facing towards the Marina to the rear, include the remains of Dundanion Castle, from where Sir William Penn sailed to the Americas in the 1600s to establish what is now the State of Pennsylvania.

Selling agents are Seamus Costello of DTZ Sherry FitzGerald, with Sheila O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald who guide the entire at €2m but will also offer it in lots, opening up the possibility of a residential house sale minus the coach-house offices which earn €50,000 pa from three tenants.

The main five-bay house with portico entrance is currently laid out as offices, but its principal rooms are all intact with fine architectural details, and extensively wired for IT.

It has been kept in superb condition, with a new, second entrance now directly facing the house on the Blackrock Road.

Its architect owner Sir Thomas Deane designed the Kildare Street Club in Dublin, the University Museum in Oxford, UCC’s Quadrangle, 1 Lapps’s Quay, St Mary’s Church and the Imperial Hotel in Cork.

Details: DTZ Sherry FitzGerald, 021-4275454