Rare opportunity to buy €400,000 Cork home on the market for the first time in a century

This lovely Gardiner's Hill property with surprising gardens has been home to the McCarthy family since 1915

Fri, 05 Apr, 2024 - 08:55

Tommy Barker Pictures: Ryan Lynch

Gardiner's Hill, Cork City
€400,000
Size	108sq m (1,160sq ft)
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	2
BER	E2

OUR homes all have stories to tell and the story of Crescent Villa to date is a long one, of being a happy hub for the comings and goings of generations of one family, much of it now thankfully written down as a heart-warming chapter in this particular house’s tale, in which one of its occupants, Sheila McCarthy was a central character. Now, with her own lifestory played out, a new chapter is imminent.

For sale for the first time since 1915, Cork city home Crescent Villa is a rarity, a detached home built practically out of sight of the road, on a former quarry, backing up to the the 14 houses in The Crescent, behind Ballyhooley Road, and hiding up a long garden path from Gardiner’s Hill, complete with lovingly tended gardens, patios and outdoor bowers for sun-taking at almost any time of the day.

Crescent Villa is tucked right back off Gardiner's Hill

‘The Villa’ is where Sheila McCarthy was born in June 1921, the youngest and last surviving child of five, of Cornelius McCarthy and his wife Mary (nee Martin), who both came to the city from farm backgrounds and who bought this house in 1915, having first lived in Alexandra Place and on the Ballyhooley Road.

The Crescent’s Edwardian era terraced houses face the Ballyhooley Road while, behind them, Crescent Villa, surrounded by old sandstone walls and with old access passageways ringing parts of it for an intriguing mix of local history and neighbourliness, is almost an island in its own right, on its recessed, wedge-shaped site.

The couple bought it from The Crescent’s builder who the McCarthy family think had constructed the detached house for his own occupancy; it’s similar internally, to The Crescent homes, in terms of original interior features but is absolutely its own entity in every other respect.

The county couple paid £700 for their city villa home back in 1915, and reared their three sons and two daughters here, with Cornelius becoming acting manager at the Metropole Hotel, after a stint at the Victoria Hotel on St Patrick’s Street, stopping off on his way home after work at 7pm for a half whiskey in the snug at Henchy’s at St Luke’s Cross.

Sheila's recollections of her dad, Corneilus McCarthy

The early days of the McCarthy clan’s life, and that of their neighbours on the hill, have been beautifully chronicled in a memoir compiled three years ago for the Villa’s last surviving occupant Sheila McCarthy’s 100th birthday, based on interviews by her nephews and nieces conducted here in her lifelong home in 2018.

Replete with reproduced images, warm memories, sharply recalled, captivating detail, local and lifestyle history, family biography, and memories of nieces’ and nephews’ visits over more than half a century, Aunty Sheila Celebrates her 100th Birthday is a treasure.

It should also be cherished not just by the family, but, surely, treasured by Crescent Villa’s next occupants who may be fortunate enough to call this place home for the next decades (hardly a century?) ahead.

Anyone with even half a heart and soul looking to move here should ask for a copy of Aunty Sheila to be made part of the purchase, so integral is her long time here.

Family still live very locally, but the hard decision to sell Crescent Villa has been made.

The home is quite as it ever was, minded, polished, garden pristine, family photographs and paintings on the walls; Sheila’s favourite chair with its worn arms is in its favoured position inside the front room’s bay window, beds made with immaculate toile de jouy counterpanes — even the heirloom bedspreads have their backstory asthey used to get sent to the Metropole Hotel’s laundry ‘back in the day’ as a perk of dad Cornelius’s position in hotel management.

By one bed is a small bottle of holy water, a prayer book missal and an image of Padre Pio; truly, this is a house not ‘staged’ for sale, rather presented in honour of its owner’s memory and long life, in every sort of good faith.

“Jeremy gets how special it is to us,” says Lucy, one of Miss Sheila McCarthy’s nieces, of selling agent Jeremy Murphy and his imminent sale listing. She lives a few doors away on Gardiner’s Hill, recalling her own weekday visits to Crescent Villa for piano practice, the deal being “Aunty Sheila would leave out the polish and cloth for [Lucy] every day to clean the piano when [she] had finished practicing”. The piano has since moved to Lucy’s own home, for continuity’s sake, but as Crescent Villa comes for sale it is a home utterly true to its past, polished with a patina of age, yet bursting with promise too for its next chapter.

In bald descriptive terms, it’s a two-storey, detached home on an exceptionally private site, always and ever tended inside and out, with high ceilings (about 3m/10ft), original fireplaces, original floors (the hall tiles are under carpet,), corniced ceilings, internal arch, picture rails and comes to about 108sq m (1,150 sq ft).

It has three first floor bedrooms, two of them great airy high ceilinged doubles, the other a smaller single with old fireplace, and there’s a separate WC and bathroom, with electric shower over the bath.

A curved step by the top of the stairs by the rear return is an unusual feature, and downstairs is a main living room with original fireplace with tiled inserts, a rear reception/dining with tall hardwood fireplace (it used to house a kitchen range), a sun-trap glazed room off, full south in aspect, leading to a guest WC/utility and, on the other side, a kitchen, likely to have been created decades ago, functional for sure, and with a sweet and small glory, a small, sit-in bay window for sunny mornings’ breakfast-taking, or midday coffees.

Apart from the house, and its privacy, visitors and would-be bidders will most certainly get enthused by the varied outside areas on the sizeable but highly manageable grounds, sun-traps, courtyard, plants and bird life, and the scope to reconfigure ‘around the back’ is huge, adding a 21st century ‘coming of age’ section to an early 20th century home with warm history.

Estate agent Jeremy Murphy guides this special listing at €400,000 going on its three bedrooms and size and, possibly age but, what some see as restraints, others will see as springboards to giving this already rock-solid one-off home (built on a quarry’s stone, remember) a whole new story to tell, in time to come.