Park life on the Mardyke

Any new occupants of Cork’s 2 Illen Villas will have one of the city’s recently refreshed public amenities - Fitzgerald’s Park - on their back doorstep.

The 18-acre Leeside park on the Mardyke, with its lily-pond, cafe, city museum and a Diarmaid Gavin-conceived Chelsea Garden Festival ‘skypod’ brought to earth by the river bank, has been firmly put back on the radar of visitors thanks to a €2.3m civic investment in the past year, which includes new playgrounds and a slick new ‘halo-shaped’ bandstand which has already played host to many free concerts and open air cinema screenings.

It’s likely that the revamp, completed in time for the super summer of 2014, has doubled footfall (and lawn sprawling) within the park, reminding Corkonians of this green lung and oasis a few minutes’ walk upriver of Patrick Street.