Montenotte's Hyde Park House and Clifton Convalescent Home to house Ukrainian refugees

Hyde Park House was favoured by Cork's merchant princes and has presidential links

Thu, 20 Apr, 2023 - 10:08

Catherine Shanahan

TWO landmark Montenotte properties with historic links to some of Cork’s wealthiest business dynasties are being evaluated for use as housing for Ukrainian refugees.

The suitability of Hyde Park House and the former Clifton Convalescent Home, neighbouring properties on the Middle Glanmire Road, are under consideration by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) as temporary accommodation venues for Ukrainians fleeing their country’s ongoing war with Russia.

Substantial renovation work has already taken place at Hyde Park House in anticipation of the arrival of refugees, subject to the issuing of a Fire Safety Certificate.

It’s understood work has also started on making Clifton Convalescent Home suitable for housing refugees.

Hyde Park House, owned by Jerry and Patricia ‘Tric’ Carey (Patricia owned and ran Skerry’s College Cork for many years), was put up for sale in October 2021 with a guide price of just under €2m, but was subsequently taken off the market.

The historic property, screened from the main road by trees, dates back over 200 years and was built, according to Buildings of Ireland, by one of Cork’s prominent merchant families, the Dwyers. It has been variously owned by members of the clergy, Quaker merchant families like the Haughtons and Carrolls, and with links too to families such as the Goldies and the Gouldings (fertiliser business).

Hyde Park House is high above the River Lee

One of its earliest associations is with a Reverend Arthur Hyde, whose family had several centuries’ links to estates in Cork, including Castle Hyde near Fermoy.

The house has links too to Douglas Hyde, the first president of Ireland and there’s even an association with former US president, General Dwight Eisenhower, whose WW2 assistant, driver and lover Kay Summersby was born a McCarthy Morrogh, and whose ancestors lived at Hyde Park House in the mid-1800s.

The Carey family bought it in the 1980s and they upgraded the 6,600 sq ft property, which had been split in two and into two ownerships in the 1960s before being restored to single ownership in the 1990s.

Set in extensive grounds of 2.5 acres, accessed via a long and curving avenue, the gardens, as previously reported in the Irish Examiner, have occasionally been open to the public for fundraisers and good causes and have won national awards.

They were redesigned by the late landscape designer and artist Brian Cross, who coincidentally spent some of his childhood growing up in Hyde Park House.

Next door, Clifton Convalescent Home runs to almost 30,000 sq ft, on 3.5 elevated acres and combines Clifton House, an historic, original period family home of members of the Murphy family, associated with Murphy Brewery Cork in the 1800s, along with a later 30-roomed convalescent home addition to the back, which was run until the mid 2000s by the Good Shepherd Sisters.

Aerial view of former Clifton Convalescent Home to the rear of Clifton House. It was sold in March for €2.15m

It ceased use as a convalescence home in 2007, due to declining numbers in the religious order and was put on the market in ‘08, guiding €4m-€5m.

Although it attracted considerable interest and strong bids then, it didn’t sell and it returned to market in 2015, guiding at €1.2m and selling to a Trust for just under the guide price. Subsequently Grangefield Developments (Seán Keohane) applied for and received permission to demolish the convalescent home, with plans to build housing, but the property was sold earlier this year, after the developer encountered resistance from planners to an element of the proposal.

The Property Price Register shows it sold in March this year for €2.15m. The building’s ownership is now being linked to Shane Keogh of specialist student accommodation company, Scholarlee, who is also a director at Denis O’Brien Developments.

Entrance to former Clifton Convalescent Home, off Leycester's Lane

The Department of Children has confirmed to the Irish Examiner that its Ukraine Crisis Temporary Accommodation Team has received an offer of temporary housing “relating to a building formerly called Clifton Convalescent Home”. In Relation to Hyde Park House, the department said it had received an offer of accommodation and that the offer “is subject to evaluation before the negotiation of a contract can begin”.