€5m mansion on Cork's Blackrock Road comes to the city’s open market

Fresh to the open market for the first time in almost 75 years

Sun, 07 Apr, 2024 - 10:08

Tommy Barker

Might a wealthy, private individual trump developers and builders for one of the very best Cork suburban sites to come to the open market in many, many years — the privately set Feltrim, on over three tended acres and mature gardens at the city end of the Blackrock Rd?

Certain to get interest for residential development of low or medium/high density, of between 50 to 100 new homes, the historic house at its core dates to the mid-1800s, and was significantly altered in 1895.

However, apart from being a prize for any developer to acquire, Feltrim may also be seen as a prize and a bullet-proof investment by a family buyer (perhaps one enriched by a company sale?) who’ll get a property almost like none other — even for the Blackrock Rd.

It’s guided at an even €5m by estate agent Michel McKenna, who says “it’s a one in a lifetime sale, it’s as good as it gets”.

Fresh to the open market for the first time in almost 75 years is this period property of c 300 sq m or 3,200 sq ft, on extensive, walled-in grounds, with signature century-old copper beech trees, an immaculate gate lodge, a large and lofted 19th century stone coach-house, and attached garages.

Feltrim is being sold by private treaty on behalf of the Society of African Missions (SMA), a French-founded missionary religious order who have the larger adjoining Blackrock Rd property, the African Missions House, now a much-extended residential nursing home, and the 500-seat Victorian-gothic African Missions Blackrock parish church of St Joseph’s as a familiar Blackrock Rd landmark.

The religious order, in Cork since the 1870s, built a college just to the east of Feltrim — which they acquired in 1950.

Originally called Laurel Lodge, Feltrim is dated by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage to the 1840s (it’s not a protected structure).

It was owned by the Hawksworth family and was later enhanced, with Art Nouveau detailing, in the 1890s by its next owners: The O’Sullivan family.

A family home for four O’Sullivan children and three servants, it was sold by medical consultant Dr Patrick O’Sullivan to the SMA in 1950 on the condition that his wife Mary, then aged 70, had a lifetime right of residency at Feltrim — a right exercised until her death in 1965, notes the lawyer acting for the SMA, John G Dwyer of RDJ Solicitors.

It became the Provincial House for the SMA order in Cork, one of five houses it has in Ireland, with others in Dublin (Ranelagh), Claregalway, Newry, and Wilton.

The decision to sell Feltrim was confirmed by provincial Fr Malachy Flanagan, who said the decision was reluctantly made to “right-size” with a move of the Provincial House to SMA Wilton.

“We are very sorry to let it go, it’s been like a little oasis,” he said.

“Our work in the parish in Blackrock won’t change.”

The property sale proceeds will be used to continue missionary work in Africa (where the order is in 17 countries) and to support the order’s nursing unit next door to Feltrim, currently home to 29 retired priests and with a staff of over 20.

Within a 15 minute walk of the city centre just past Ashton School, Feltrim has been extremely well-maintained down the decades.

With several grand reception rooms and hall with period detailing, Feltrim has over 100m of frontage to the main Blackrock Rd with a refurbished one-bed gate lodge at its entrance — retained after road widening some years ago.

Planning was sought for the Blackrock Rd property right next door, on the city side at the derelict No 1 and 2 Ashton Place and Ashton Park last autumn for a development of 44 apartment and four houses by Dwellings Developments Blackrock Rd Ltd, with access to that site proposed from Ashton Park to the rear.

Development options at Feltrim are multi-faceted.

It might be bought as a single, trophy family home and top investment — think the satirical possibilities à la the fictional character Reggie and his riffing on his €5m mansion on the Blackrock Rd.

It could be divided into several apartments, with other residential conversion scope in the garages and coachhouse.

The grounds could be divided into select plots for individual high-end homes.

It could take a scheme like Botanika, completed several years ago, or a Lindville, where some homes resell for well over €1m.

A search on the Price Register shows more than 40 €1m house sales with a Blackrock/Blackrock Rd, Cork, address.

Equally, it may be bought for a higher density scheme, townhouses or apartments or a mix — such as on the adjacent Boreenmanna Rd at the likes of Belfield, on the southern side of the SMA properties and Ashton — near where a new Crab Lane national school expansion is envisaged.