€285k home in Cork's Jewish quarter has chutzpah in spades

Affordable Albert Road terraced home faces city's Shalom Park in historic Jewish quarter

Fri, 29 Oct, 2021 - 19:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports

Cork City
€285,000
Size	82 sq m (880 sq ft)
Bedrooms	2
Bathrooms	1
BER	E1

AN UPGRADED mid-terrace home, for sale for the price of a decent apartment, has Cork city centre on its doorstep; an Aldi at the Elysian tower is 100ms away; a new F45 gym is just about to kick off nearby, in which Irish and Munster rugby legend Peter Stringer is a co-investor, and directly across the road is a playground and public park, dedicated to the memory of Cork’s Jewish community.

Peter Stringer and Peter O'Keeffe, Irish international golfer, (left) are business partners in the new F45 gym at The Elysian, Cork.

Carrying a €285,000 AMV is 11 Monerea Terrace, a walk-in condition city property, done up by a trading-up owner, who gave the 880sq ft two-bed (it had been a three-bed) a tasty makeover and upgrade.

Dash-faced No 11 faces south across Albert Road to Shalom Park, a niche urban green lung and play area named to commemorate the vicinity’s local century-old title as Jewtown, when it was the hub of a community of several hundred souls from Easter Europe, now down to a handful of individuals and families.

Memories of those decades are, coincidentally recalled in a recent, award-winning video Memories of a Cork Jewish Childhood, by Ruti Lachs, which was a runner up in the National Heritage Awards Week 2021, after virtual tours proved a lockdown hit in 2020.

And, now coming hot on that video’s heels is a publication by Cork City Libraries, Memoir of an Irish Jew, by the late Lionel Cohen, launching November 16 with Prof Dermot Keogh, which with humour recalls Mr Cohen’s time in the Irish Army during The Emergency, in the British merchant navy and his period in Israel after 1948, before returning to Cork when he worked in later years at Lota.

Gardai Kay Griffin (left) and Marie O'Neill with Helen Phelan, Hibernian Buildings , Cork meet up in the wild garden at Shalom Park in summer 2021

Might a copy of Lionel Cohen’s Memoir end up on the bookshelves of Jewtown’s 11 Monerea Terrace? Or might the award-scooping video be screened insidethe door of the neat and accommodating mid-terraced buy?

Despite having a handy rear outdoor yard and storage shed, No 11 also currently has an owner’s surfboard up in a bedroom amid surfing posters, memorabilia and camper-van lifestyle images, as well as a daily use bicycle hanging from a wall fixture in the entry hall, and most usefully, has an exterior walled and railed-in small front section for less pampered bikes, and for recycling bins.

Note glass blocks in dividing wall between reception rooms

Internal visual features immediately catching the eye at No 11 include a hall wall stripped back to original mellow brown slob brick and timber studs, and the installation of a number of 1930s glass blocks high up on a dividing wall between the property’s two reception rooms, each of which has a wood-burning stove in a simple fireplace surround, as well as gas central heating.

Flooring throughout the ground level is in solid walnut, and the rear reception links now to an added-on and opened-out kitchen extension, with access to a super tidy and organised yard, via double doors in the kitchen and also via a single door at the end of the hall for a bit of fresh air circularity.

Up the carpeted stairs are two wood-floored bedrooms, with old fireplace hearthstones visible, and an oak floored bathroom with fully tiled walls and good-sized shower enclosure with instant electric shower.

Two access points to the small and tidy yard

The Property Price Register shows a steady price progression of former, artisan houses n Cork’s Jewtown, with several tipping over €250,000 and much favoured by first-time buyers, keen on local bars cafes and delis,, while a larger, B2-rated 1,259 sq ft three-bed at nearby Eastville came for sale in August, at €315,000

VERDICT: It’s not just the bike in the hall at 11 Monerea that’s on a roll: the area by Shalom Park is simultaneously hot, and cool.