Cover story: Tenby Cottage is a very special place

Blackrock, Cork, €585,000

THERE’S huge individuality to the 19th century houses built along Castle Road, between Blackrock village and the iconic confection that is its castle. Blackrock Castle’s current structure was built back in 1829, and the houses lining the Ringmahon way to and past it both pre-and post-date the castle’s latest incarnation.

The whole of Castle Road has had a resurgence of civic and public appreciation in the past decade; Cork City Council rightfully bought back Blackrock Castle, now home to a popular observatory, and an even more popular cafe, and the narrow road and pavement skirting the River Lee is being worn smooth by leisure walkers, and envious house oglers.

Now, new to market is one of Castle Road’s most visually beguiling homes, Tenby Cottage, glimpsed behind old high stone walls which are home to clambering plants and several discreet gate entrances. It’s on a lovely, long and luscious corner site by the quaintly named Tenby Lane. It’s certain to attract covetous viewings, and estate agent Timothy Sullivan can expect to put in long hours conducting tours, inside and out, up stairs and out along the gardens’ paths.

He pins a €585,000 asking price to 2,600 sq ft Tenby Cottage, an end-of-terrace early 19th century home where individuality and character is key.

It’s a joyously, assymetric meandering sort of place, typified by its fan-lit entrance on the side, and with its front facade a mix of single and double storey bay windows. The view from the back is no less confusing, but it’s all equally aesthetically pleasing, internally as tasteful as they come.

Tenby Cottage has since the early 1990s been home to second-generation architect Peter Murphy, who with his conservation training managed to restrain professional impulses to modernise, and large enough not to need extending. He and his wife Jane have the family rearing years done here now, and its down-sizing time.

The Murphys had acquired Tenby Cottage in a house-swap with its previous owner, a journalist, trading down then for similar reasons having bought in 1966 from siblings the Misses Gregg, of a well-known Church of Ireland and legal family, the Greggs whose members included Rectors, Deans and Bishops in Cork and Armagh.

It has had a succession of caring owners, who put equal passions into gardens and house, with the current owners having done significant conservation work.

The gardens? glorious, settled, simple and scented. Visiting on a warm evening, with heat in the air and even more stored up in the paving slabs, the air’s heavy with the extraordinary scent of old, traditional roses blousily rampaging over walls and trellises, and with thick-stemmed old wisteria twisting up and cascading back down a sturdy pergola. The long garden is fully walled-in, and thus extra sheltered, and secure off-street parking at the far end of the garden, by an old coach-house, screened off by a row of beech hedging.

The owners, along with the neighbours, have each secured planning to convert those old garden-end buildings to a couple of three-bed mews residences. That’s not really factored into the sales direction on Tenby, as agent Mr Sullivan believes a new owner will want the whole lot, but may take comfort in some possibly future value here at a later date.

The garden has a private, tree-shaded front lawn, best reached by French doors from the main drawing room’s window bay, and behind and to the side sheltered by 8’ walls to the lane are mature trees and shrubs, a range of fruit trees and herbaceous plants. Notable are the several varieties of old roses, wisteria, clematis, viburnum, tree peonies, cherry trees, agapanthus and hellebores, and diagonally beyond the gardens is an old horse chestnut tree at someone else’s garden end, but a sight to behold right now with its robust jutting flowers among a canopy of large leaves.

Castle Road has had several recent house sales even during the more depressed years, with sales from €300,000 for a very raw terraced do-er upper to the more recent sale-agreed in the high €500,000s for a similar era (but larger) home to this, needing further spending. And, a site for one dwelling off Tenby Lane went to market last year, guiding €385,000, and has been actively pursued. A Ballintemple//Blackrock Road period house called Madore which graced these pages just last Saturday with a €640,000 AMV quoted by Sherry FitzGerald, has had a dozen early viewings in week one.

So, there’s certain to be a surge of curiosity about a place as attractive as this.

Agent Timothy Sullivan calls Tenby Cottage one of Blackrock’s finest period residences, externally deceptive, and home to 2,600 sq ft of gentle quality space.

Entered from the side, it has an idiosyncratic layout, with two formal, 16’ long reception rooms with original fireplaces off to the left or north, along with a ground floor bedroom by a bathroom. This room makes catering for an older relative, or independent teen, or au pair, an easy semi-independent option.

There’s an understated elegance to the old stairwell up to the bright landing (the walls are adorned by framed old architectural prints) and the hall is 23’ at its maximum, irregular length. The kitchen is sort of buried off the hall, and is 14’ by 11’, looking more like a second or service kitchen than a main, family-friendly cooking/eating/chatting-to-the-chef sort of space. It’s likely that new owners might want to extend it a bit more into the brighter area by the south-facing sun-room, currently used as a dining room and music room, tiled with old, rich-hued terracotta tiles.

Marginally extended by the present owners, and surprisingly modest in scope and size at just a metre or so added on in the painted timber structure (but equally making itself right at home with garden aspect) it’s a lovely breakfast/dining room, but possibly under-used: might new owners extend it out further again, especially as it is the main access point to the sun-trap rear decking and stone-fringed patios? If so, the irony won’t be lost on the architect owner, who resisted the urge to go large: ” we just didn’t need any more space, it’s very accommodating, and we were even able to have separate gardens when needed,” he says (there’s further garden access from a long utility off the kitchen/breakfast room.)

Upstairs is an eccentric mix of dormer and full-height rooms, as well as home to a small office cubby, and a large bathroom, down a few steps from the landing and with walls papered in a repeat toile de joie pattern for quite a rich look, abetted by a marble-topped vanity unit.

There’s a roof light over the landing and stairwell, bringing light down into the house’s core, picking out the many framed artworks on the pale yellow walls. The main bedroom is high-ceilinged, is 16’ by 14’ thanks to a deep window bay, overlooking the front garden, and there are two or three more bedrooms, all novel shapes, and with one set of linked rooms, where there’s access to a study/guest space through one of the three main first floor bedrooms. This side, to the city or western end, is the oldest part of the house, likely to be c 1820s, so a 200th birthday is coming up. (Back in the early days, houses along here had gardens running to the river, and the castle access was through fields and an older road behind; it’s only in the 1800s that what we now know as Castle Road separated some from their water frontage.)

Virtually all of the original architectural features have been kept here at this fine example of the period. Windows are old sash with shutters, French doors have been opening and closing and inviting garden visits for generations, and the roof is slate, up and down and embracing the odd dormer window, tall bays or projecting annexes.

Overall condition appears excellent, and deferential to its considerable age, but it’s likely once viewers turn to bidders, they’ll be drafting in the expertise of other professionals and making personal plans for their own needs. Engineers might take a sterner line than the architect owner and his family, but the simple truth is that Tenby Cottage has benefited from low-key interventions and careful ministrations for a century and a half — and why change that now in a rush of blood to the budget?

VERDICT: A very special home, lucky the person who gets it next.