Ursuline Sisters' second multi-million euro land sale in Cork’s Blackrock

€4m three-acre offers follows €13m sale of 32 acres in 2002

Thu, 23 Sep, 2021 - 17:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports

A SECOND, multimillion-euro Blackrock village Cork property sale is in the offing for a religious order, who sold their historic convent there almost 20 years ago for €13m.

Religious conversion, and conservation. Former Convent is now Blackrock House, laid out as luxury private apartments.

Coming to market this week, with a €4m-plus guide price, is a plot of 3.26 acres in the transformed suburban Cork harbour village, where hundreds of new homes and apartments have now been built on former convent owned lands, and where the Ursuline Sisters have had a presence for 250 years.

Last days of Ursuline Order at their old convent in Blackrock. Pictured 20 years ago, in 2001 were Sisters Finbarr, Veronica, Mary and Ursula in the convent grounds. Pic: Gavin Browne

The sale offer comprises a walled-in site, accessed off Convent Avenue, of over three acres, which currently contains an 8,700 sq ft two-storey modern building, with 16 bedrooms (15 of them en suite) and facilities.

Most likely to be development for housing, it also has scope for a nursing home/ retirement village.

It was built over two
decades back, as the Ursuline Order’s sisters vacated their historic convent and one-time school building, dating to the 18th century, built in 1720 for a wealthy merchant, Christopher Tuckey, as one of Cork city’s finest houses.

Then named Pleasant Fields, the expansive property was purchased from a city jeweller, a Mr Theuron, for £5,000 (according to the authoritative Yale University Press Buildings of Ireland Cork City and County by Frank Keohane) in the 1820s by the Ursuline Order, as they expanded from the South Parish, from what’s now Nano Nagle Place.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin TD opened the new Ursuline School in Cork's Blackrock back in 2003. From left Sr. Jean Browne, Elizabeth Lynch, Imelda Power, Sr. Mary McDaid, then-Minister for Health, Micheal Martin TD, Deirdre Clune and John Kelleher. Pic: Gavin Browne

Following the construction of a new girls’ secondary school, the old school, convent, and chapel, on 32 acres, was put up for sale by the Ursulines in 2001, selling for a reported €13m in 2002, bought by Lyonshall.

Original masterplan for convent site back in 2003, by OMP Architects: Model plan layout at the Ursuline convent site in Blackrock, Cork.

The developers subsequently got planning for over 500 houses and apartments, to a design by architects O’Mahony Pike (OMP Architects), and then sold on for over €30m, the bulk to Pierce Contracting for the high-density new builds, and the convent to Firestone Developments.

Both schemes again changed hands after the crash, before the convent, Blackrock House, was completed for luxury apartments. Glenveagh Properties are completing the balance of the Pierce/Eden element, having paid €9m for the balance, which had 140 units to complete before strategic housing development planning was granted for 274 apartments — the site that keeps on giving?

Now, with the latest convent lands’ site to come to open market, estate agent James O’Donovan of Savills describes the Ursuline Order’s recent residential enclave on 3.26 acres, with 16-bed building, as an unencumbered opportunity
and “a prime development site in one of Cork’s most desirable and sought-after residential addresses”.

Against a backdrop of the housing shortage and the Government’s Housing for All plan for 300,000 new homes by 2030, “there’s a real shortage of top-quality development land in Cork’s top-tier residential locations — and this certainly ticks that box”, Mr O’Donovan states, asserting that “a development site of this quality will be sure to attract the attention of developers both locally and nationally.”

Future development at this €4m-plus guided site could span private, social, or Approved Housing Bodies, or nursing home/retirement community.And, a buyer could get short-term income from rental of the 16-bed building, with communal facilities — laundry, utility, parking — suggest Savills, whose previous estate agency incarnation as Hamilton Osborne King handled the original €13m 32-acre land and convent sale for the Ursulines in 2002.

Rear view of Blackrock House, previously Ursuline Convent (and in the 18th century Pleasant Fields, is now home to 27 luxury apartments.

They add that apartments at the converted 18th century Blackrock House achieved sales values between €300,000 and €700,000, while four-bed semi-detached houses in Eden’s Blackrock Crescent were fetching about €440,000 in 2019.

The property now for sale by way of private treaty is situated along Blackrock’s Convent Road. It’s level, private, and landscaped, which “will assist in creating a secluded and exclusive setting for any future development”.

The selling agents predict “a good level of interest in the property not only from developers but a range of purchasers across multiple sectors given the property’s flexibility.

“There’s no doubt that developers both locally and nationally will have an interest given the location and strong sales and rental values that are achieved in Blackrock, but we also anticipate other interest from the nursing home sector who have been very active in the market over the last couple of years.”