Oldest house in Cork’s Marina has just come to market at €1.15m

Lee-facing Northcliffe retains many of its 300- year old features and is tastefully decorated and well-maintained throughout, writes Tommy Barker.

The Marina, Cork City €1.15m

Sq m 367 (3,950 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 4/6

Bathrooms: 4

BER: D2

Best Feature: Real period deal

PROBABLY the oldest building on Cork city’s graceful, tree-lined River Lee promenade, the Marina, comes up for sale this week.

It follows on the heels of individual sales of two highly impressive Edwardian semi-detacheds, one called Arigideen at €935,000 and more recently another called Kilmona for just under €1m: this is no slouch either, detached, large, and immaculate, it’s guided at €1.15 million by Sheila O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald, who handled those last two Marina homes. She can expect to see some familiar faces coming through the doors here now.

With the exception of the ruins of Dundanion Castle just to the city side of it, this seemingly low-slung Georgian home called Northcliffe is the earliest build on the Blackrock village end of the Marina.

It dates to the early 1700s, 50 if not 100 years before the so-called Navigation Wall was erected, allowing the Marina’s slobland reclamation and river dredging, to create the now-leafy and linear amenity (and deep water shipping channel) that’s now enjoyed by walkers, and boaters of all sizes.

Cork historian Richard Hinchion’s book East To Mahon, which tells the story of the development of Cork’s suburbs from Ballinlough through Ballintemple, to Blackrock and Ballinure, devotes half a page to Northcliffe, noting it was built on four acres of land here by a Joseph Nagle of Mallow.

Nagle was an uncle and noted benefactor of Nano Nagle who established the Presentation Order of nuns, to educate the poorest of children. Much of his estate passed to her and to the Presentation Order after he died in 1757.

Facing north onto the Marina, and backing onto a stubby cliff section to its southerly rear, Northcliffe later passed from Nagle family hands to a Thomas Dixon, who had run a very successful house decoration business in Dublin, specialising in paint effects and the finest of wallpapers.

And, that’s sort of a coincidental link, because as Northcliffe comes up for new ownership, it is immaculately maintained, and painted and decorated, inside and out, from chimney pots to wall plinths, yet retains a huge integrity and authenticity of its age.

Coming up on 300 years of age (give or take: some estimates are that it was built in 1711, or 1718) it’s now on a far more modest site than its original four acres, but still comes with front garden and formal and side entrances, and has two separate rear patio gardens behind, backing to a rock-face.

A real sign of its antiquity is a distinctive side garage, big enough to build a boat in, with gothic internal windows and some of the house’s original slate-hung gable wall visible within.

It’s on Northcliffe’s city/western side, tucked into the cliff and the winding section of Convent Avenue. That narrow lane skirts around this property, leading up to face the ‘new’ 1960s replacement St Michael’s RC Church on Blackrock Road: the previous 140 year old church was destroyed by fire. A back bedroom window at Northcliffe looks directly up Convent Avenue to the church’s front doors and spire, a double reminder that this house is in the very heart of Blackrock parish.

Its current owners have been in lucky and happy occupation here since 1989, and are now ‘trading down’, having built next door in Northcliffe’s side garden, in a new-build designed by Coughlan deKeyser architects.

That house is all-but finished, and already a new boundary screen and boundary has been planted, each house fully respectful of one another.

They also moved the entrance from the side garden to directly in front of Northcliffe’s entrance porch, with a graveled drive, with parking left and right, as well as that aforementioned large side garage, plus old stone outbuilding and store/workshed, marking the eastern boundary with the new, easy-on-the-eye neighbour.

After they first moved in, Northcliffe’s owners took down a rear annex that was a mix of old and intertwined rooms, and created instead a large new kitchen wing, with overhead en suite bedroom.

Today, the ground floor is a very well kept reincarnation of the original, with three period-era appropriate reception rooms, internal hall with old tiles and terrazzo in the porch sheltering the original fan-lit entrance door.

It has coved and gently ornate ceilings, panelled hall walls, and the fireplaces are authentic period pieces, with relined flues.

Windows are graceful, painted hardwood, sash in appearance but bottom hinged in operation, and each has reinstated a top arch with inset red glass corners. The care taken is commendable.

There are two en suite bedrooms to choose from as master suites here at first-floor level, one to the front with views of the Marina and River Lee, there’s an internal stepped level, and there’s a dressing room also: the other’s to the rear, a very decent size, also with bathroom but, to be honest, whoever buys here is going to want the water views on waking.

The other two bedrooms are also to the front, with solid maple floors, and each has a wash hand basin. This spacious level (the house is very broad) also fits in a good bathroom, and a walk-in airing cupboard, with permanent low level of heat for airing and drying clothes on hangers, all behind an elegant fan-lit door frame.

Although from its front elevation, Northcliffe looks to be a quite sizeable two-storey building, it has in fact a another, uppermost floor for even more substance and accommodation, yielding two more good bedrooms. When the owners moved in day-one, their sons immediately colonised them: one only left and deigned to drop down a level, aged well into his 20s!

VERDICT: The Marina is back in vogue among Cork’s citizens, joggers, walkers, and with its better-heeled home hunters.