The fascinating history behind this Cork home renovation

The heritage restoration of a harbour-side Youghal cottage contains the story of a remarkable family built to last

The exterior of Rena’s Cottage c.1817, the home of Rena Ahern, set on Allins Quay in Youghal. Pictures: Larry Cummins

WHERE the Blackwater Estuary breaks to the sea, there stands a magnificent run of high walling girdling the corner of Allins Quay in Youghal. Drunken, ancient cobbles irrupt beneath lobster pots and fish boxes.

Seagulls cleave the open skies in plaintive meows and voices ring out across the swelling water of a densely populated, inner harbour.

The weathered golden quarry stone, rises sharply as the gable of a cottage facing into Store Street. Now resplendent in Kilkenny limestone steps and sills, and tailored in fresh lime pointing, it’s what estate agents jadedly describe as unrepeatable. The cottage is proudly bannered with the figure of a heron and an undulating penoa flower as Rena’s Cottage.

Kieren Ahern of Ahern Bros, Youghal with his mother Rena. Pictures: Larry Cummins

Interior designer Stephanie Hennessy was determined to use panelling in the cottage to introduce warmth and character. The palette is suspended on white walls, grey panelling and toffee dark timber flooring. The lush citrus shaded velvet furnishings give Rena that colour she craves.

Rena Ahern can be neatly described as mighty. Her life has been an enviable, affection-rich adventure through Africa, Honduras and the UK, always centred on family.

Rena’s Cottage is her 53rd home. Born and bred in Youghal, she left for Gravesend in 1957 as a 17-year-old bride to join her husband Dan Ahern, a civil engineer and project manager. I sense her charismatic husband as being totally present, still at the very centre of this remarkable family.

“He is here,” Rena responds without hesitation. “He was a great husband, a great provider, a wonderful father. He loved his religion, singing, poetry, stories, people, travelling; he just loved life. He would say ‘we’re off!’ and we would just pack up. I wouldn’t have a clue where we were going — he would tell us when we got there. I adored him and he loved me, and we had a great life together.

“I always say about people in contract work like Dan; their kids are stupid and their curtains never fit.”

An old black and white photo image of the schooner 'Kathleen & May' berthed beside the cottage in 1924. Between 1908 and 1931 the schooner was based in Youghal as a part of the Martin J Fleming coal shipping fleet.

Bedroom in Rena's Cottage. 

The lights in the main room were introduced to signify the bubbling water and sea foam lapping the quay. Supplied by Pamela Cull. pamelaculldesign.ie. 

Kieren Ahern sits with us in the tide-dappled morning light in the main reception room of Rena’s Cottage. He listens attentively to his mother’s regular, hand-grenade declarations, which have me guffawing like a donkey.

Rena and Dan went on to have six clever children. Kieren, the youngest was born in South Africa, and attended 22 schools.

“We are a big family scattered all over the world,” Kieren reflects.

“We are united by our parents. My father was a self-educated, very spiritual man, and his spirit still feels really strong, surrounding us all.

“Every home I’ve ever lived in has been memorable to me” Rena responds when pressed for a favourite or three. “Whether it’s a house or a caravan, you get there, and you clean first. You give each child a brush.

“If there was a horrible bit of garden, you put the laziest on the job, because he would find the easy way around it.”

The house is remarkably shy of belongings, a relief in its elegance and simplicity. Despite Rena’s declarations that her favourite thing in the room is “nothing”, this matriarch survivor clearly has the touch born of frugality, invention and a centred approach to what matters. “I love colour and doing a place up, I could make anything look cosy, because I had nothing. If the place looked shabby, you cleaned it, you put a cloth on the kitchen table with some flowers or fruit. The fire was always on, there was laughter and music. It was a home they always wanted to come home to.

“A house is to live in it. You shouldn’t get attached to a house or things.” If I had to pick a favourite place out of the lot, it would be O’Brien’s Terrace, my home place, a small council house with two bedrooms. There were eight of us in it — six kids and my parents. We were perfectly happy.”

In 1992 Rena’s beloved Dan (senior), was working in Nigeria, when he was killed in a trench collapse. “It happened on a Sunday,” Rena recalls, “and I was due to travel out to him on the Wednesday from Bristol. It was a blow. Still, when you have children you have to get on with it. Our funds, the small amount that they were, were frozen, so like the lady next door, I opened a B&B. I also got a job in a bingo hall by night.

“In 1995, I moved back to Youghal, to a house in Knockaverry.”

Driving dumpers from age 8, most of the Ahern brood went into construction-related work initially. Sean has a successful role in set construction in the movie industry (recent credits include Unbroken (2014), Peter Rabbit (2017) and the highly anticipated Elvisby director Baz Luhrmann (2022).

Built-in storage is taken right up into the double-height ceiling with plenty of deep shelving to hide everything from linens to household clutter.

The kitchen/dining area. 

Interior lighting beside the framed Dan Ahern's Creed. 

Daniel is a civil engineer, persuaded into banking. Liam is a quantity surveyor, and Annie runs a back-packing centre in SA. Mike and Kieren Ahern lead the stone-mason firm of Ahern Bros, renowned for meticulous, sustainable, conservation and restoration. With civic and private projects including Horgan’s Quay, St Finbarr’s Hospital, St Mary’s Collegiate Church (Youghal) and the exquisite, highly publicised renovation of Belvelly Castle, they employ 23-25 skilled crafts people.

Five years on, Rena would move to Harbour View Court and another 10 years on she bought a five-storey period home on Emmet Place.

“I find moving exciting, and the boys did a brilliant job completely repairing and restoring that fine house,” Rena says. “Still, it had 71 oak steps top to bottom. I had always wanted to live in a cottage, so here we are.”

What is now Rena’s Cottage was built before 1817, when it appears on a demesne map of the Duke of Devonshire’s holdings. It was set in the corner of an open yard used for bulk trade goods like coal and lumber, on land reclaimed by the wealthy Georgian merchant families of the Greens and Allens.

In 1847 it was described in Griffith’s Valuation as a corn and bacon store, a grain-drying kiln and yard leased to a William Carberry. Known lately and fondly as Jimmy Corr’s Cottage, it came to market as a dull, rendered little building set into a monumental wall. Brim with promise it was offered as one parcel of three buildings bounded on three sides by that the cottage and the quays.

“Daniel was home from SA on holiday,” Rena explains, “I loved Emmett Place, but it was a huge house for me to float around in. We took a look at Allins Quay together. It really was a dump. You wouldn’t live in it if you got it for nothing. Still, if we had the other house we could put up visiting family and friends. He said to me, we can really make this look like something — that’s if you want it. So, I said okay.”

Stonemason Kieren Ahern of Ahern Bros, Youghal with his daughter Erin at the door to Rena's Cottage.

A long room formed from the original footprint, a new extension sitting on a former lean-to, the kitchen has a nicely detailed kitchen embracing Rena’s indoor dining area, and matches the grey of the paneling throughout the main living spaces. Declan Hennessy, a manager for Cash & Carry Kitchens is a member of the Ahern family and supplied the kitchen, making the most of that quay side sash widow piercing the monumental walls of Allins Quay.

The rear garden and patio/courtyard. 

The family bought the entire site. It comprised of Jimmy Corr’s cottage integrated into the corner wall, smothered in render, damp and barely habitable, a structurally dodgy prefabricated shed which had to be demolished, plus a considerable two-storey 1960s house built for an executive at the carpet factory, peering with faded stature over the wall out to the river. That house is about to be completely transformed for Daniel, who is returning from SA, and the family imagine a communal garden, with three generations routinely milling around.

“The cottage seemed like a natural fit,” Kieren chimes in. “It would keep Mom on the flat for starters. When we were chatting outside, I teased off a bit of the external render and the stone was all there. Inside it had a terrific feel and character. In the evenings here with the light and atmosphere, you could be on holiday. Jimmy Corr was a popular, creative man, and we believe he left such a nice feeling here. I was initially tempted to knock the big house and make more units, but we decided it would make a perfect family complex. My daughter Leah, is building a house in the empty lot where the sheds were. The rest of the site we’re not sure what to do with as yet.”

Given the skill set of the Ahern brothers, the refit of the stone cottage was relatively straightforward.

“Because the original floor level of the cottage was under the flood plain,” Kieren explains.

“I had to raise it by 600mm. You can see a mark on the outside wall from the highest tide there ever was in the town. That produced an issue, as I had to keep the house accessible for my mom while introducing two limestone steps. We also needed to keep disabled access in mind for the future too. “Happily there’s a ramp on the other garden entrance that serves the main house.

“The cement had to come off the exterior walls so that we could re-point and give them breathability again with sustainable insulation and lime-based materials. We needed to get the ‘U’ value up in the envelope of the cottage. We introduced independent studs to the inside of the exterior walls with vents, and insulated them with cork board (which can absorb and release moisture naturally). These materials came from Hugh Dorian of The Stoneware Studios. We didn’t extend, we just re-jigged the layout, took off the lean-to, but kept the footprint and distances with a new build.

“We brought in architect Rae Moore from Dublin,” Kieren continues. “She’s young and had some interesting ideas. It was a collaboration. She created open, uplifting spaces and a good layout, and Dan and I followed up. The interior design is by Stephanie Hennessy, and the panelling was her notion. I set the symmetry through the centre of the windows; I’m a bit neurotic about symmetry.

“The flooring was to be wide plank oak, but Mom preferred this slimmer plank and what Mom wants she gets! Julia Gebel and Christian Helling, regular members of our conservation team, cleaned the stone outside. Julia sculpted the name plaque which combines a heron which is our coat of arms, and the South African protea flower which tells the story of us.

Rena, prepared to be pleased, had only one thing on her wish list — a kitchen away from the lounge. With 53 homesteads behind her, this matriarch is not a believer in stark, rude open-plan. Her broken-plan layout is gaining traction over open-plan across the interior design world. “If someone is in the kitchen, sure I don’t want to see them”, she explains. “The boys got it so right. I knew they would. I have complete faith in them because they’re fantastic at what they do. I was living in the big (1960s) house during the refit, so I was ‘behind’ them so-to-speak. They would tell me to ‘go away’ — maybe it wasn’t always as polite as that!”

Kieran recounts: “This was a good project to showcase our work and what we care about in the town in which we live. There’s something metaphysical about it. When you put the correct things into a building, you feel like you’ve done something right. We inherited those principles directly from my dad. We would rather lose money than not stick to best practice.

It’s a gift not just to mom, but we hope, to the heritage of the country too.”

• SOURCEBOOK
• Self-build/contractors: Ahern Bros
• Consultant architect: Rae Moore
• Stone cleaning and conservation: Gebel & Helling
• Carpentry: Parker Construction
• Designer: Stephanie Hennessy. Tel: [phone]
• Flooring source: Delforno Tiles & Timber (Cork)
• Lime mortars: The Stoneware Studios
• Lighting: Light Plan
• Kitchen and fitter: Lyndale by Cash & Carry Kitchens
• Stone steps: Adrian Budds
• Heating elements: Farho radiators/Dimplex fire/Farho booster pump/Denis Broderick & Sons
• Furniture: Luceys Furniture and EZLiving
• Dresser: Declan Hennessy
• Windows: Munster Joinery
• Doors (internal): Handles & Hinges
• Insulation choices: Cork board to walls as advised by Hugh Dorian/The Stoneware Studio
• Kilkenny Limestone: O’Connell Stone 
• Painter: Donnacha O'Callaghan