Old Cobh grocery now delivers the goods in property style-stakes
Shop past recalled during renovations of harbour property with vista, writes .
Harbour Row, Cobh, Cork Harbour
When inside this just-revamped home, and looking at some of the interiors uncovered and revealed, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in some New York warehouse conversion, or some trendy, hipster flat in London’s Shoreditch.
One look outside and through the windows, though, will dispel any such far-flung location notions: there’s no mistaking the setting, we’re slap, bang in the middle of hilly Cobh’s town streetscapes, where all almost all of the terraces, over two centuries of construction and incremental development, look south, over the wide expanse of Cork harbour, over its once-more appreciated sheltered islands, right out to the mouth of Cork harbour, out by Roches Point.
It was all a revelation to the woman who bought No 40 Harbour Row, five years ago, and who has worked away on it, on and off as an investment but also part-hobby part-labour of love, ever since.
From Dublin, she had wanted to get her teeth stuck into a peculiar property project, and when all the odds and ends in the capital started going out of her price range, she started to look further afield.
Cobh, she said, was a discovery and a revelation to her: she rocked up, and was blown away by the setting, streets, buildings set out like tiers in a theatre’s upper circles, and engaging period architecture, from Georgian, through Victorian and onwards since.
She’d come to check out one or two good value propositions, and stumbled across the mid-tier No 40 Harbour Row on her brief strolls around.
Dating to the 1800s, it had traded as a shop, Twomey & Son Groceries & Provisions, up until the early 1900s, she reckons, and then went through several iterations, ending up long before 2014 as five flats, over three levels and backing into the enclosed, cliff-backing rear garden.
However, she readily admits she didn’t really appreciate its merchants’ past and pedigree, until she took off a fascia over the ground floor window and above the side entrance door, and found that ‘Twomey & Son’ name and legend beautifully lettered, curlicued and carved into the old shopfront as a display board of wares within, back a century or so ago.
There’s now a ‘double act’ on Cobh’s Harbour Road, as the building right next next door to No 40, the ‘Old Post Office,’ is also converted to private living use, reprising an emerging trend of former shops and bars and more in Irish towns and villages going to repurposed ‘domestic service.’
Another pleasant surprise awaited, when she and her partner started interior works, to reduce the five flats into one special harbour facing home. They found an exquisite, well-preserved shop ceiling in grids or panels of diamond-shaped wood panelling, which now, exposed and repainted, are a glory, on high at the high-celinged (3.4metere high) ground floor’s open plan main kitchen/living/dining room.
Then the piece de resistence, was the discovery of red brick walls behind old plaster, in what was going to go on to be the kitchen’s main wall, and exposing that brick bought that whole ‘industrial chic’ revival look to yet another level.
If the ceiling was/is the icing on the cake, then an old cast iron pillar or column plays a vital supporting role too in the remaking of this sweet confection.
Taking out much of the back wall to put in a wall of glass revealed an old steel support, bearing the imprinted inscription in relief letters of one Robert Merrick, a 19th century Cork iron and brass foundry owner who did much key infrastrucrual work in Cork from the mid 1800s: this column was possibly one of thousands he produced.
Today, 2019, it’s sort of inadvertantly in pride of place now at No 40, in the mid section of the four-storey property’s newly installed back wall of sliding glass (Munster Joinery), looking out on the just cleared private rear courtyard, with an impressive tall back wall a bit away, with Cobh’s Harbour View, with long, more modern terraces of homes above, on the next tier.
A real location marker in particular, almost directly in front of No 40 as a sort of vertical exclamation mark in its vista, is the still proudly free-standing 1870s chimney-stack, tapering and octagonal, on a square, squat base (pic, right).
It’s said by the National Inventory/Buildings of Ireland guide to be “the only surviving element of the public baths which were located on this site. The chimneystack enlivens the skyline of Cobh and is a prominent landmark on the east harbour.” That stack, is set down beneath Harbour Row, on Lynch’s Quay, by Cobh’s old ‘Holy Ground’, a place of ill repute for visiting sailors in previous eras, as unwitting an emblem in hindsight as a barber pole is for a more innocent sort of men’s services......
Now romping home to the final conclusion of its restoration and conversion to private dwelling, No 40 Harbour Row comes to market with East Cork estate agent James Colbert, who reckons the BER-exempt former commercial/retail/rental premises is now very close to 2,000 sq ft, and with views from just about every principal room.
The connecting landings, and stairwells, as well as several upgraded bathrooms take up the tall property’s rear section mostly (it’s about the tallest on Harbour Row,) where all the back facade’s windows are replacement double glazing in sliding sashes, from Munster Joinery.
The same window company put in the three sliding sash windows at street level to the front, reconfiguring two previous casement windows that had been there in earlier uses. But, as the front’s top three levels had already had their other south-facing windows replaced in pvc, including the two-storey deep bays at first and second levels, these were left in situ.
No 40 has four bedrooms over its two floors, some with old fireplaces and one has an exposed red brick side wall, while the first floor has side-by-side reception rooms, with deep bay windows, one with a window seat for watching the world go by, on road, sky or sea.
A number of original wood floors have recently been refinished by expert James Farquher of the Cork-based Floor Doctor company and who also does high-end projects in Dublin and London.
The original encaustic tiled hall floor at No 40 has been uncovered, and the main kitchen/dining/living space to the left of the hall has has a herringbone pattern laminate new floor. The property’s original stairs with delicate spindles, handrails and curves in all the right places over so many levels is quite the work of skill, an appreciative and impressed Mr Farquher told the owners while on his work visit.
The eye-catching main ground floor room, savily decorated with salvage, stuff sourced and bought online and from other sources including ship-style storm lamps, has a fitted kitchen with painted units, marble-look worktops, free-standing presses, and an over-sized long dining table from Harvey Norman.
It’s a super-bright space, with 12’ high ceilings and with that wood panel ceiling trim, and the Wow! effect room is double aspect, with large sliding door accessing the enclosed courtyard, and off it is a utility room. The front now has those three, street-level sash windows, fitted with adhesive film sections on the windows’ lower halves, to simulate a sand-blasted look for privacy screening, and a small border is left around each sheet for peeping out through.
It might seem strange, screening out the view at this lower level, which is likely to be the heart of the house always, but in fact the views are best from the next level up as there’s a road and wall blocking close water views: the light just streams in, nonetheless.
Auctioneer James Colbert rightly describes the views as panoramic, and as the Irish Examiner arrived to view, a large white and yellow Grimaldi Lines container ship was making its away around the harbour’s shipping channels to access Ringaskiddy, catching and holding the eye and the attention span while it passed by Harbour Row.
“The cruise ships are even larger, and seem to loom even closer,” says No 40’s still-impressed renovator, of her constantly changing ocean-oriented backdrop, while admiting that for ‘true’ Cobh locals “they don’t seem to pay any attention anymore.” As the four-storey, sizeable, robust and characterful No 40 goes for sale at €375,000, with all of its period trim and detailing and slight reminders of merchandising days, agent James Colbert suspects it will be bought by a new arrival to town, who’ll be as smitten as its vendor was, both by the property and the Cobh panorama.
It wasn’t all constant work for the four or five years, adds the owner, who took long times out while working in Dublin to continue to fund her restoration project, and she reckons her petrol bill up and down from Dublin to Cobh runs into thousand of euros by this stage.
She thinks she’ll once more go for a quirky property play “but closer to Dublin as I have to work there still.” Her work here included tearing down the back annexe, a remnant of the days when this house held five flats, and recalls filling 17 skips, as well as just about where every item was sourced.
She’s now leaving it with 95%, or maybe given what she started with 99%, of the work done: visited last week, there were a few minor finishing touches left, but there’s a suspsicion that when viewings start by next week, there’ll have been a final burst, to the practical finish line.
VERDICT:
Over-the-counter selling probably stopped at Twomey’s a century ago, before it was broken up, now it could be a smart buy in it own right.
Get The Look
Some great ideas for you to use in your home and where to get them.
1.Bring home the goods. No 40 Harbour Row was a shop in the 19th and early 20th century, later was sub-divided into flats, and is now back reinstated as one substantial property, with its original carved ‘Twomey & Son’ shop fascia uncovered, but neutrally painted.
It’s part of a trend in Irish towns and villages where former shops and bars find new roles as family homes, given their central position within long-established communities
2 Warehouse chic: exposing old, internal stone and brick walls can unearth interiors treasures, and set a style guide for this kitchen’s vibe and feel
3 Sitting on the bay of the dock? The only thing lovelier than a bay window with seating scope is a bay window with a bay or harbour views
4 Feed your crew: pendant, lantern-like lamps like these have an appropriately strong marine tone to them. Note to the timbered ceiling and diamond grid shapes. The extra size dining table is from Harvey Norman
5 The hard yards: No 40’s courtyard now is all cleared up
6 Stack and rack: Cobh’s sentinel old 1870s brick chimney stack is a survivor from the days when it served a public swimming baths. Ironically, passing cruise ships now are even taller, with swimming pools on their upper decks
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