Go for the weir and wonderful at Leeside's €650k Edwardian beauty Athdara

Early 1900s gem on the Lee Road overlooks the weir by the Lee Fields

Sat, 22 Apr, 2023 - 07:26

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports Pictures John Roche

Lee Road, Cork City
€650,000
Size	173 sq m (1,868 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	2
BER	D2

YOU know you are living on Leeside at Athdara, an elegant, upgraded, Edwardian house overlooking the broad weir at the city end of Cork’s Lee Fields, where the river splits to wrap around the city, before reuniting at the island’s tip, on the old Port of Cork site.

Athdara is at the city end of the Lee Road

It’s an exceptional, unmistakeable setting, yet one of Athdara’s co-owners, having lived in Cork since they bought Athara five years ago, had a hankering to return to her native Dublin, and has now secured a job there.

So, she, her Corkman partner, and Penny, the friendly and energetic cockapoo, are selling Athdara, leaving this lovely Lee Road home.

Doggone...or going, at least, vendors are returning to Dublin

It last featured in these pages in late 2016, and they are leaving it in even better condition than when they acquired it, though Athdara was lovely then too.

The setting is a few hundred metres from the triple-arched Thomas Davis Bridge, by the Mardyke; and when built, around 1906/1907, it would have had its location described as a few hundred yards from Wellington Bridge.

Setting by Rose Hill, above Thomas Davis/Wellington Bridge

Since, though, there’s been a shift to metric from imperial measure and to nationhood, among a raft of other changes this place has seen.

Inter alia, they include the arrival of County Hall in the 1960s, for decades Ireland’s tallest building, in the vista out from Athdara for the past half a century.

Main living area with bay window, new oak parquet floor and stove

A slew of other smaller buildings followed in its wake, the most recent being the Jenga-like blocks of University College Cork’s stylish student apartments on the old Crow’s Nest site at nearby Victoria Cross.

Clearly of a different and gentler era, Athdara was built by a local family, the McCarthys, as part of an eye-catching pair of Edwardian architecture semi-ds, and shares the same demi-lune with its ‘other half,’ Avoca Lodge, on a roadside stretch that has a mix of 19th and early 20th century homes, in a variety of sizes and styles.

More notable neighbours on the western side include the Victorian waterworks, now a heritage visitor attraction, and the former, severe Victorian Our Lady’s Hospital, once Ireland’s longest building, facing the tallest, as proud Corkonians liked to boast.

Since Athdara last changed hands, it has been rewired, with some eye-catching lighting, sockets, and switches.

The main bathroom has been upgraded, but still has its large cast-iron bath, there’s an entire, sleek, new kitchen, a high-grade stove in the main, bay-window drawing room, and a new gas boiler, while app-controlled thermostats adorn a number of quality vertical radiators on select internal walls.

There’s also upgraded roof insulation and a new, large Velux over the slate-roofed top-floor stairwell. A new, insulated floor has gone down in the main, linked, ground-floor reception rooms (with ventilation under), topped with oak parquet.

In addition to the new Savvy kichen and considerable tiling from Fired Earth, plus an upgraded utility and storage, and a new décor palette in Little Green paint hues, sourced from Hickeys, all adding to an ambiance set by a mix of modern and mid-century furniture, some salvaged and repurposed items.

However, one of the more engaging artworks is, of course, entirely out of place. It’s an original Civic Survey map, probably as old as Athdara, depicting the layout of Dublin and its environs, ringed by Dublin Bay and depicting commute times to and from the city centre from the suburbs.

With that in such a prominent place in the living room, it’s little wonder the draw of Dublin has overcome the charms of Cork for the woman of the house.

Onwards, and upwards, then.

Here at Athdara, upward mobility of a sort has also been assured by the provision, outdoors, in the sheltered, enclosed courtyard, of a galvanised spiral stairs, sourced as a comprehensive kit from Dublin-based Valentine Ladders, installed by the departing occupants to give access to the property’s vertiginous, rear-tiered garden, touching a cul-de-sac lane high above, called Rose Hill Upper, and with crow’s-nest-like views from on high.

That sit-out courtyard is accessed via slender double or French doors from the dining room, or from the revamped kitchen/utility (where the new door has a dog flap for Penny), and from a covered side-access passage along Athdara’s western gable, handy for sheltering bikes, sports gear, and the like. In front, a Liscannor-paved front-garden is accessed off Rose Hill, home to a mature Dicksonian tree fern, among other happily-at-home and well-ensconced planting.

Inside and outside, it’s all quite beautiful, with a modernised aesthetic that encompasses original architectural features, obvious from the front door, with its retained door, old brass letterbox, and glistening, polished carmen-red hall floor tiles.

Windows, in the main, are original sashes, with a patina of age and old glass, with most in front being a lovely six-pane-over-single-pane sash arrangement, while the views from the south-facing property just get better as you ascend each of the three levels, reaching their zenith at the top, attic front room, with its distinctive half-moon window and, again, retained, original, small glass panes.

(Both of this handsome pair of Edwardian semi-ds, Athdara and Avoca Lodge, have kept faith with their original windows, adding so much to the aesthetic, and noted by appreciative passers-by.)

Given the couple’s return to Dublin, Athdara is fresh to a spring and early summer Cork City market, where supply of well-set homes like this has been scare this year.

It’s listed with a €650,000 AMV by estate agent Ann O’Mahony, residential director of Sherry FitzGerald Cork, who can expect quite the cross section of viewers as the days get longer, and as more and more walkers pass the ‘For Sale’ sign, doing the ‘Healthy Heart’ Leeside loop out the Lee Road, the past Anglers’ Rest and back via the Lee Fields.

First floor home office: was a tiny, fifth box bedroom, but was opened up

Apart from the lure of a location within a walk of Apple, UCC and major hospital employers, those viewers could include city folk looking to trade up, Corkonians relocating from up-country or overseas, and wanting a city home with charm, along with admirers of period-era homes and their attractive domestic architectural details.

Maybe not surprisingly, members of the architecture profession were among the buyers of quiterecent resales in close vicinity to this Lee Road/Rose Hill location, and where several have gone over the €500k price mark.

Nearby, in fact, one, called Rose Hill House, came close to the €1m mark, showing at €985,000 on the Price Register just over a year ago.

When the 3,200 sq ft Rose Hill House featured in these pages in 2021, it had carried a €895,000 AMV, so was bid well beyond its guide….as was No 1 Rose Hill, which was offered with a €425,000 AMV, and which shows on the register, also from early 2022, as having made €522, 500.

In contrast, this home, Athdara, had been priced at €550,000 when it last came for sale, in 2016 (vendors back then had been here for 30 years, rearing a family, before getting an urban site to build on the Mardyke) and it sold for a recorded €490,000. That was before it was further improved.

Among the upgrades to the 125-year-old bay-windowed beauty was the reconfiguring of the mid-level, on the advice of an architect friend, where there had been a small, fifth bedroom facing the Lee Road and river.

The couple took the simple expedient of opening that small former box/bedroom to the landing (pic, above)and set it up as an airy, open and sunny, south-facing home office, graced by a healthy ficus tree, and a work desk, a Nordic design called Adeline, with its tapered legs and neat, suspended drawers.

That occasional Nordic look, seen in various lighting items at home here also, is more than matched by the more locally-sourced items, such as a small round side table in the living room and a slender hall console table, made by by skilled cabinet-and-furniture maker Paul O’Brien in the 2017-founded Cork business, Modet, near Kinsale.

Modet also refined a cut-off piece of ash, with bark outline, as a handy support for books and bath products.

This spans the wide cast-iron bath on the return level’s redone bathroom, home now, as well, to a walk-in shower with rainfall head, marble-tiled walls (Fired Earth), Edwardian-style sink on chrome legs, and with feature side lighting by the vanity mirror from Naas-based Number 10 Design.

Looking original to the Edwardian/Arts and Crafts era, too, are the leaded and stained-glass panels on the lower section of this good-sized washroom’s three sash windows, depicting cockles and mussels, but they were, in fact, specially commissioned for the home a few decades back from Duggan Glass.

There’s a mixed provenance with lots of the furniture here, with some from the likes of Cork’s Caseys, for a quite sinuous, timber-armed armchair from a range called Salisbury, to others, such as Womb Chair and footstool in the bay window’s pride of place, and 366 Concept dining chairs from CA Design, Dublin.

The couple got a large-display vintage sideboard from House McGrath in Douglas Woollen Mills, and as interesting as the items inside it is the intriguing trove of books, pamphlets — many on varied medical-related themes and ailments — and letters found here in the house when the floors were being lifted.

They had belonged to a previous family of owners, who they think had a tea-and-wine merchant business in Cork in the 1930s, very much part of the house’s history, and linking its ‘mere’ four family owners, to date.

Changes notable now, on a 2023 revisit, include the black-painted stairs with pitch-pine rails and newels, with new, light, sisal carpet flooring over the various levels, sourced from Christys in Douglas, the opened-up landing, and the extra light from on high in the roof.

Then, at ground, while the rooms’ layout has sensibly remained original (with old folding doors between the reception rooms), the kitchen behind now has solid-wood, matte-style units, with the upper ones concealing task strip lighting and also going full-height to the high ceiling.

They were done by Savvy, a company based in Thurles, Co Tipperary, and are topped with Neolith sintered stone, sourced from Stone Link in Dublin.

The units, in an L-shape, embrace a number of integrated appliances, including a Bora induction hob and dishwasher; the floor is an oak herringbone pattern and splashback tiles are in a small, repeat pattern, a bit like Orla Kiely leaves meeting arrow feathers in a pale marble, and very restrained, while small, globe wall lights are from a range by Spark and Bell.

The front reception, meanwhile, has a graceful bay window with four sash windows, in original six-over-one frames, with a new oak parquet floor (ventilated underneath its insulation, notes the engineer-trained co-owner) and the original, solid-timber doors between here and the dining behind are bi-folders, with brass fittings.

Courtyard to the rear with access to raised gardens

Ceilings in both interlinked rooms are nice and high, with simple cornice plasterwork and picture rails, white-painted architraves, and high skirtings, while the front has an original, slate fireplace with powerful Dik Guerts wood-burning stove standing in its wide, cast-iron framed ope.

There’s approximately 1,800 sq ft of accommodation over the three levels, and the next owners will be spoiled for choice as to what to consider their main bedroom: Is it the one at mid-level, with a wide bay a match for the one in the living room directly beneath (previous owners had used this a piano nobile, or first-floor living room, back when it also had a fireplace), or the top-floor en suite one, with demi-lune window?

Parking is on the road outside (residents at Rose Hill have a sort of local agreement on the closest spaces by Athdara, say the departing owners,) and there’s also parking with residents’ permits across the way, along the Lee Road itself.

Viewings at adaptable and enhanced Athara start in the next few days with Sherry FitzGerald’s Ann O’Mahony, who says the Lee Road setting “is a superb residential location in Cork, if one is looking for city living. It’s within a gentle stroll to the city centre, where all social and essential amenities are at hand.

“Prime facilities, such as UCC, the Mardyke Sporting Grounds, Cork University Hospital, FitzGerald’s Park, Lee Fields and significant hospitals and schools are easily accessible,” Ms O’Mahony adds.

VERDICT: Athdara can hold its head up well with Cork’s other limited stock of similar Edwardian homes, in the likes of the Marina, Ballintemple, Herbert Park, Douglas Road, and College Road…and it has the River Lee safely below, at its feet, and the wafting and soothing sound of the weir in the background.

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