Slice of Victoriana at Cork harbour's €450k Albert Cottage

London has the famed V&A, the Victoria and Albert Museum: Cork  harbour has its own V&A pairing, a couple of cottages named for the long-serving 19th century British monarch Queen Victoria and her consort Albert, who visited Cork in 1849

Broadly affordable 'cottage:' Albert Cottage on Monkstown's Strand Road is launched at €450,000 by agent Patricia Stokes

Monkstown, Cork Harbour
€450,000
Size	135 sq m (1,450 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	2
BER	D1

LOCAL and indeed international historical links are recalled in Cork harbour’s Albert Cottage, a slice of Victoriana in both name and nature, on Monkstown’s Strand Road.

Albert Cottage, left, with Victoria Cottage alongside as its other 'V&A' half

The semi-detached home, more than a cottage really as it comes with period trim and over 1,400 sq ft, is one half of a pair of gable-fronted houses built around 1840, named Victoria and Albert Cottages after the then Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Victoria’s 63 year reign started in 1837, and she and her husband Prince Albert made their first of three visits to Ireland in the post-Famine period, 1849, visiting Cobh which was then renamed Queenstown in her honour, part of a PR campaign which failed to stem the rising tide of Irish nationalism.

Victoria's other half?  Albert Cottage

Victoria & Albert Cottages — where Albert Cottage in now up for sale — have seem many tides and turns too in their almost two centuries in existence, and form part of Monkstown’s stable of Georgian and Victorian era fine stable of properties aspected to the water, spanning terraces, pairs or semis, and both little and large detacheds.

Dip a toe in harbour period home market for €450,000

When built c 1839/1840, sea bathing was becoming quite the thing, with the Royal Victorian Baths opening in nearby Glenbrook and the route out along by Passage West was finding favour for holiday makers and bathers, aided and abetted after the 1850s by a rail line to the city and, later again, on to Crosshaven.

Along the decades, this cottage has seen the rise and fall of such links;steady evolution of shipping and commerce; and, the arrival of the pharma sector to the harbour basin. It’s continuing in use too for pleasure boating, with a new marina for small boats set up in the last decade, only a few hundred meters along the Strand Road from Victoria and Albert Cottage.

Pocket doors link front reception rooms

Along the way, there’s been quite the resurgence also of the lifestyle attractions to be had living in a period home around the harbour, the views and amenities and access to the waters: plus ca change.

It’s change of ownership time now at Albert Cottage, the left hand side of the so-Victorian pairing, with its listing via agent Patrica Stokes for a family selling and who’ve had it since 1998, minding it all along the way. A uarter of a century ownership seems like quite long time, but maybe not necessarily in a home that its next occupants may be in for its 200th anniversary in another decade and a half.

Long-term thinking does come into it for sure with a home so steeped in the past and its locale, and easy-to-live-with Gothic touches.

Various accounts of its origins suggest it may have been built as a pair for a Cork city hat maker of the day, John Stephens, while the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage suggests it may have been built for the Scots born John Arnott, later Sir John Arnott (becoming an MP, and Lord Mayor of Cork), who started his merchant and drapery days in Cork in the 1830s and into the 1840s, later expanding to Limerick and Dublin cities where the Henry Street store Arnotts still bears his name.

Arnotts, on right

Who’ll throw their hat in the ring now to fill such shoes (to mix a top-to-toe metaphor?) Trish Stokes says she can expect a cross-section, from smaller families to starters-out and all the way up the age scale to traders-down, who’ll be attracted by period details and feel, location, heritage and the relative easy maintenance.

Albert Cottage has interlinked front reception rooms with original sliding ‘pocket’ doors with polished brass knobs; the rooms have display shelves/picture rails on high, ringed with small decorative plates, one room has an antique-style fireplace with timber surround and tile insert in cast iron, original doors, whilst the carpeted stairs and return has a dado.

All three bedrooms are doubles with some charm, with the main one having two arch headed widows looking out over the harbour waters and wildfowl reserve, towards Shanbally and Ringaskiddy.

Part-covered outdoor area

Albert Cottage, with its distinctive shaped ornamental facias and limestone sills which it shares with Victoria Cottage next door, has had replacement PVC double glazing installed, has central heating, gets a D2 BER and has all the signs of a being a cared-for and appreciated home.

Externally, it has both off-road and on road parking, cast iron railings and gate piers bearing its name to the front, has a front lawn and planted beds, paved front, west- and water-facing facing sun terraced with flagstones, side sit-out space too, as well as a neat-sized rear courtyard, with tiled floor and part-covered section with polycarbonate roof, ideal for weather-shelter, clothes airing, keeping bikes or buggies, and which would be an easy job to go OTT on with massed outdoor planting and lighting for ‘room outside, right alongside.

VERDICT: Welcome to the V&A, Victoria & Albert, Cork harbour ‘cottage’ style.