Living large in huge sea-front mansion

The eight-bedroom Maryland House, near Crosshaven, has a games wing and swimming pool. It was once a hotel, says Tommy Barker

Weavers Point, Crosshaven - €1.2m

• Size: 650 sq m (7,000 sq ft)
• Bedrooms: 8
• Bathrooms: 9
• BER: C3

TOO big for its boots? No matter, Maryland House has a bright future, and a bright panorama on its doorsteps.

Now tipped past 100 years of age, this imposing block of a house, at Cork harbour’s Weavers’ Point, beyond Crosshaven, has been both private house and a public hotel, down its many decades.

What’s now its main living room was once a restaurant. Old, black-and-white photos show the room laid out for guest dinner service, and whether private or public, hospitality appears to have been Maryland House’s constant guiding star.

In most recent decades, it has had several private families of owners, with surnames including Lennox, Kirby, and Kerins, and it was during the ownership of the late Peter Kerins, an engineer, businesman and property investor, that Maryland House grew even larger in stature, with a games wing added on one side, and a vast conservatory on the other, linking back to an indoor, heated, nine-metre swimming pool, hot tub and sauna.

A handful of large homes were built in the early 2000s in Maryland’s rear grounds, but, at the same time, nothing really impinged on it to the side and front, between house and ocean on the other side of the Weavers’ Point road.

Locals suggest the name/address came from ‘Wavers Point,’ given the number who would have travelled here as a last vantage point, to wave off loved-ones and ships departing Cork harbour for the New World.

Today, it still stands on 1.3 acres of private grounds, which fan out in front to encompass 150’ of road frontage, with two access points; the property spans a whopping 7,000 sq ft, and its narrower, rear grounds even include a grotto/statue of Mary, the Blessed Virgin, keeping faith with the house’s Maryland name.

Not only is it modestly massive, but it’s also one of the best-sited properties on Cork harbour’s headlands, says Stephen Clarke, an estate agent with REA O’Donoghue Clarke, who is now charged with its sale, and who suggests it may be bought as a home, as a commerical venture in a resurgent economy, or by someone with a view to getting a few more sites on its generous grounds.

He’s selling the spectacularly sited Maryland House for owners, the capable ex-Irish Navy man Conor Foley and the welcoming Martina Foley.

Their former Haven property business oversaw the bonanza of short-term lets, to visiting yachts-people, for hundreds of local Crosshaven and Carrigaline property owners, during the hey-day of the bi-annual Cork Week, at the nearby Royal Cork Yacht Club.

Back in ‘the height’, some houses rented for many thousands of euros for just a week or so, with the owners using their windfalls to fund an overseas holiday for their families. They were temporarily discommoded, but handsomely rewarded.

The couple are deeply committed to Crosshaven and to the sea, and they bought Maryland House back around 2007, at market peak, with three teenage children in tow.

The Foleys bought with the intention of running it as an upmarket guesthouse, given its setting and size, robust build quality, and high-end bathroms with almost pool-size baths, plus ocean-scanning views, including sunrises over Roches Point, to the east, and day- and night-long shipping and maritime movements in its direct gaze.

In fact, the Titanic would have anchored in its foreground, on its fleeting and fated visit to Cork, in 1912, shortly after the time Maryland House was first constructed, reckoned to be 1907.

And timing is just about everything, Martina notes ruefully. When the crash came and the economic tide receded, the guesthouse plan receced over the far horizon.

“How could you run a guesthouse, at a time when struggling hotels were offering their rooms at €39 a night?” she asks, quite rhetorically.

So, the Foleys kept it as a busy and lively family home. Very lively, in fact, thanks to a love of rugby, and to regular party nights when their children and friends descended on Maryland House, clearly perfectly pitched for party hosting, what with the pool, conservatory, games wing, gym, and expanse of ground to kick a ball around on (and which, in more genteel days, had, for a while, hosted a croquet lawn).

The couple’s daughter, Sarah, is married to former Irish rugby Union and ex-Munster player Denis Fogarty, and they’ve just returned to Cork, after his spell with French clubs, including Provence, with their two small, French-born children.

Son Daryl Foley’s immersed in rugby, also, living in Crosshaven, and is captain of Dolphin (that’s a rugby club, for the uninitiated), and the couple’s youngest son, Ryan, left to play his rugby in France two years ago, and is currently playing professionally in London, at champiponship level.

Not surprisingly, “we’re now living in a very quiet Maryland, but, for many years, it was a vibrant house, before they all flew the nest,” says Martina, adding that “many busy active years were enjoyed around this sport, in this wonderful house, that is now the peaceful version of its former self!” If its walls could talk, they’d be quite the VIP gossip and sports snippets listening point, but, today, indeed, Maryland House stands quietly serene above all of that tittle tattle: it even survived the most recent Storm Callum, unperturbed, while the ocean churned over the cliff walls.

REA auctioneer Stephen Clarke enthuses about the “utterly spectacular, uninterrupted views of Cork harbour,” from very many of the vantage points in the original house, most notably framed by its two-storey bay windows, with main, 35’ by 15’ drawing room and formal, 26’ by 15’ dining room at ground; and from two of its best front bedrooms, directly above, also, while, off the central, first-floor landing is access to a big viewing balcony, which was added by previous owners. While functional, it is not exactly pretty.

Overall condition is good, and room sizes in the main house are generous, without being daunting,

with suitably high ceilings, period-era fireplaces, ceiling coving and plaster corbels, with a stunning, stained-glass feature at the front door, plus its side and overhead panels.

The ornate glass work, set off by luscious greens and contrasting rainbow colours, variously depicts the Cork Coat of Arms, a round tower, a church (Templebredy, nearby?) and doves, among its engaging details.

While there’s the feel of a sturdy Edwardian period home to the central house, and its well-proportioned rooms (including four, en-suite, first-floor bedrooms), the family kitchen is more modern, with granite worktops on quality oak units and a large and useful pantry/utility.

A side door leads to the 32’ by 26’ sun room/conservatory, with air-conditioning, and double-glazing set around a commercial-scale steel-frame structure, with a few steps up to the rather dated pool/leisure wing, hot tub and gym.

And, to the side is access to an entirely self-contained, one-bed guest wing, with kitchen, bathroom, and a living room, with expansive views beyond the wide parking apron.

Meanwhile, over on the house’s western side is a two-storey extension with four bedroms, and as many bathrooms over its two levels, along with a big, 26’ by 23’ games rooms.

Once more, there are viewing and vantage points aplenty from this side, and joinery is largely in ‘no expense spared’ teak, with a previous owner’s initials engraved in the glazing of hardwood double doors which led, of all things, to a spacious, attached garage.

There’s evidence of lots of cash having been invested in Maryland House, across several recent ownerships (at one stage, it was offered in the early 2000s at €1.6m, but never sold at this rarified level.)

Today, it’s guided at €1.2m, by REA O’Donoghue Clarke, and Stephen Clarke says it balances period roots, quality space, and lots of it, a smashing site and amount of grounds, and that all-elusive prospect: ‘further potential.’

While it might have guest accommodation options, it’s unlikely to revert to full hotel route: that ship has possibly sailed, with the likes of Crosshaven and the bays area’s other ‘Glory Era’ hotels now all repurposed, such as The Grand, and The Helm at Weavers’ Point, broken up into apartments, and others, like the one at Church Bay, largely defunct.

But, what with the success of the elegant, and oldest of them all, Crosshaven House, now a proud, flag-carrying, bespoke luxury guest and wedding-venue flag-carrier, perhaps anything is possible for a place like Maryland House and its Cork harbour vista. After all, it even has a grotto on its side.

VERDICT: Ready for new horizons.