Darkness to light: The phoenix-like transformation of Cork City's Carrig House

Boarded up for many years, landmark Cork property Carrig House has a new lease of life, writes Tommy Barker

The main exterior view of Carrig House on Cork's Lower Glanmire Road.

There's a phoenix quality to the (re)construction crew behind the return from flames, and cold, cold ashes, behind Cork City’s Carrig House — back to fantastic, good health and a future as a family home once more after 20 years of dereliction, and 200 years of mixed-use history.

The glebe view of Carrig House.

Sadly, the capital of the south has a legacy of letting quite extraordinary buildings lie idle, prone to arson or vandalism, or both.

Insert your own pet grudge here: think of once-fine mansions and villas above this Lower Glanmire Road, Lee-facing 1820s property, up on the Montenotte hillside, such as the departed Woodhill, Woodlands, Ard Na Laoi and more, or various convents also straddling the northside’s shouldering hills, hulking shells like the Good Shepherd Convent?

Carrig House pictured several years before its restoration. Picture: Denis Scannell

Or, most criminal of all, Vernon Mount House, outside Douglas, dating to the 1790s, languishing from the late 2000s, ripped asunder by fire in 2016, barely a shell now. “You should take on Vernon Mount,” Irish Examiner Home ventures to suggest to artist-turned-builder and conservation expert Leo Linehan, on a revisit with him on a bright spring day in 2025 to this property, Carrig House. He replies that he thinks Vernon Mount has been demolished: it hasn’t, but its fate still hangs in threads.

Today, the sun brightly shines in the windows of this south-facing, painstakingly yet knowingly, rescued and restored 200-year-old house, with features from both the Georgian and Victorian eras, now with a B3 BER, and air-to-water heating for creature comfort across three levels of this commodious, c 6,000sq ft house.

Carrig House was a radio and electronics school in the mid-20th century for a time after ceasing to be a private dwelling. 

Called Carrig House for generations, it was known as Bellevue House in earlier centuries — and the reason is clear. It is but a stone’s skim or a puck-hurl from the arrow-straight section of the Marina opposite Páirc Ui Chaoimh, with the view facing over the river to Cork’s now-loveliest and best-loved leafy Leeside strip, and a promenade well-positioned to reflect back on Carrig House’s rescue, with warmth, affection and appreciation.

For strollers, gleaming white Carrig House is a standout property, in good company, in this under-appreciated, south-aspected setting. Bellevue, indeed.

The back door and worn hearth step stone.

Having served time in the mid-20th century as a radio and electronics school after ceasing to be a private dwelling, and then being torched, there’s now a welcome reversal in its fortunes.

Bellevue/Carrig House could once more be a family home within the coming months, after a multi-million euro sale was advanced of late, yet to close, after a (re)construction bill likely to have been in the region of €1.5m.

After years of being boarded up, Carrig House was sensitively restored.

Bear with us here, in this off-centre but happy narrative: this isn’t (yet!) a feature on glistening interiors, though they can’t be far away. Wouldn’t any interior designer love a commission here? This is about the beauty beyond skin deep, of good building bones, skeleton and structure and flawless, ageless finishes and self-belief: basically, if Carrig House had human form, it would be Isabella Rossellini.

The 200-year-old house has features from both the Georgian and Victorian eras.

BUT, it had previously flamed. The house scorched internally and through the roof back in 2002, after years of dereliction while owned by CIÉ who, at least, by partial way of recompense, reroofed it post-blaze, and boarded up its windows and door opes, while awaiting someone with desire and chutzpah to breathe new life into it, the kiss of life.

Carrig House now has a BER of B3 and air-to-water heating for creature comfort across three levels.

It took the best part of two decades to come to fruition, whilst in the same period several other period homes on its doorstep got sensitively restored too, while Irish Rail funded an access bridge to them, and to Carrig House, as part of a commitment when the rail line out to East Cork was first mapped in the 1850s. That bridge cost a reported €12m: talk about an exclusive, private entrance!

Carrig sold not once, but twice. One buyer back around 2015 bit off more than she could chew (though buying for a seemingly low c €220k), and it resold for €420,000 in 2021 to Linehan Construction who delivered — as clearly seen here — to a finished entity that just has to be admired, in walk-in order to use the property sales cliché.

A period window with trefoil detailing.

Salvation

The Irish Examiner’s Property & Home pages featured Carrig House as a work in progress in 2022 — when we also eulogised the work Linehans had done at Skibbereen’s highly-regarded Church Restaurant in a period ecclesiastical town Home mag: building, not just once (in 2003), but twice (after a maliciously initiated blaze in 2006).

The bathroom in the restored Carrig House.

Today, Skib’s Church Restaurant thrives, and in its own domestic way, Carrig House has followed suit, to 100% completion, ready for home handover, such a rare example of a Good News story that we’re back, here in Home’s glossy pages now, beyond being impressed.

Good as new, but old and seasoned, with its tall roofline, Carrig House has its internal, staircase reinstated, reinforced and with carved details matched; it has new windows (from Rationel) and the gothic-style, original, carved trefoil-headed windows are immaculately represented, and roof lights (lanterns) from UK company Roofmaster now are in-site in side wings on the west and eastern single-storey wings, replacing older and inauthentic crenellated wings. Cork stone fireplaces have been sourced from Jimmy O’Driscoll of Noble Antique Fireplaces on Forge Hill, installed now and ready for stoves, while the kitchen is Linehan Construction’s own handiwork.

The kitchen at Carrig House, by Linehan Construction.

Munster Coving did the ceiling plasterwork details, and Pat McDonnell supplied specialist heritage paints. Finished across all three levels, with spacious attic rooms adding to a possible bedroom tally of six or more (and there’s also access to a central flat roof right on top for outdoor views for the brave), it’s now ready for keys handover to its buyers. “It was almost calling me to it,” says builder Leo Linehan, second generation in the wider trades after an early career in fine art and sculpture, training in Cork and London, with much of his work now in UCC.

Carrig House has its internal, off-centre staircase reinstated and reinforced.

“A place like this tells you what to do,” Leo says, while admitting Linehan Construction (www.linehanconstruction.com) has done bigger challenges (there’s one Victorian stunner in Monkstown), as well as new builds, with 19th-century city properties also reinvigorated around North Main Street, Adelaide Street and Grattan Street: he says it’s great to be able to present a property like this, back to Cork.

Linehan pays tribute to retired Cork City conservation architect Pat Ruane for his guidance and encouragement in the early phases of the project, which lasted several years for its dedicated work crew, while Cork investor Donal Cronin paired up with Linehans to fund the rescue.

Leo Linehan of Linehan Construction and architects Alannah-Rose O'Grady-Kennedy and Bilal Mu'azzam in the dining room in 2022 during work on Carrig House. Picture: Dan Linehan

Fortunate architect graduate Alannah-Rose O’Grady-Kennedy worked on the top-calibre Carrig House rescue project over the past several years, adding that it was “an honour to help reawaken, one to cherish through our careers”.

She adds the team is onto new projects now, and says it would be up for other “diamond in the rough” challenges for clients, with Carrig House a very particular calling card for quality conservation: “These types of projects are rare to find but Leo finds these gems and puts them back on the map.

The stairs in Carrig House photographed during the rebuild in 2022. Picture: Dan Linehan

“From day one, he’s had the vision; I’ve been lucky to be by his side through the works and assist in any way possible.

“When we were first introduced to Carrig House, she was a ghostly, derelict shell. But now she stands proudly at the gate to the city, showcasing her true, natural beauty.

The hallway/entry with herringbone floor and old sandstone wall and overhead roof light.

“To resurrect these properties comes with a big price tag. But, if you’re fortunate and brave enough to embark on such works, I can promise the outcome is beyond your wildest dreams and worth the blood, sweat and tears.”