Montenotte House and its great hall shows why the area has such a property pedigree

There's almost 200 years of history at 1830-built Montenotte House

Sun, 25 Aug, 2024 - 17:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports

Montenotte, Cork City
€1.15 million
Size	392 sq m (4,200 sq ft plus garage)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	Exempt

THE name, Montenotte House, says an awful lot about this home — it’s quintessentially ‘Cork’.

Guess where? No prizes, it's unmistakably Leeside, pure Cork

Elegant and elevated and loftily named, Montenotte House has nods back to Cork city’s distant past and growth spurts from the 19th century, while it also nods forward, to the city’s 21st century evolving future development nexus, docklands, which it overlooks with a benign yet imperious watchful eye.

To say that the corner-set home on quite remarkable grounds has pedigree is to understate it, while venerable old Montenotte itself is having a renaissance of sorts too, basking in its south-facing heights, houses both little, large and mansion-sized picturesquely slotted into its shouldering hillside in tiers.

This end-terrace house by Montenotte Road, past Corkscrew Hill, is in a central setting in the southern city’s elevated Montenotte suburb, on Lover’s Walk just up the hill from where the reinvigorated Montenotte Hotel is now getting €680 per night for B&B in 10 charred wooden chalets or lodges set up into in trees in its grounds.

While that luxe €8mhotel investment is just out of the blocks, and wowing well-heeled guests who are well-wheeled to their overnight abodes on electric golf buggies in the hotel’s hectares of sloping, landscaped ground above the city, the more august Montenotte House in its own even more special and wholly-private grounds is coming up on its 200th birthday, having been built in 1832 for a William Connor, a master baker.

Connor’s name, the date Feb 1 1832 and the simple boast ‘Montenotte’ is inscribed on a faded limestone plaque on the house’s front façade, left of the discrete, ‘give-nothing-away’ entrance door (pic, left), with perhaps hints of architectural elan and address ambition dropped by the presence of three round-headed tall window on the right hand side of the door.

Other than that? You’d have to guess away, until now when pictures here today reveal a lot more: quiet presence, period detailing, a real panorama of views — try seeing if you can see more than the 14 church and chapel spires than the owners can reel off?— and, the money shot, the double-height, arcaded hallway in a split level/multi-level home.

You can’t miss it, this great hall, surely suitably Italianate in style as befitted the associations with many things Italian, from art to architecture in Cork’s affluent 1800s.

Not only is this first landings stage a show-stopper in its impact, volume and decoration, it’s also dressed all in yellow, in shades somewhere between canary yellow and a more acid shade perhaps, banana or mango?

Whatever the name of colour, the impact is immediate, only dialled back a shade or two by display items, from paintings to porcelain, and from books to furniture, ringed and framed by ornate cast iron stair spindles and balusters. All in in yellow, too.

The ‘family in residence’ has managed to stamp its own mark on Montenotte House over their almost half a century living here and working in the city centre, and have managed to fill its every corner, and walls with eclectic choices in art, over multi-levels and down into a bone-dry basement level with its bright rooms and contrasting feel, away from the relative grandeur above, but none the less entirely habitable.

It’s all in remarkably good health, especially for a 192 year old, with a host of internal surprises not least of which is the remarkable double-height hallway (talk about a breathtaking entrance statement!) and has enclosed heat-trapping gardens and terraces brought back to verdant life by its appreciative owners of the past 46 years.

The couple, who reared a fortunate family here, engage with unbounded enthusiasm about their love of their home, equally of their city and are able to survey swathes of Cork, from the old urban core to the outer suburbs south, east and west, from the harbour downriver where it strives to reach the sea, to the County Hall and, far beyond, the Sheehy mountains to the west.

“You see something different all of the time,” says the woman of the house, standing in the wide bay window of the couple’s first floor bedroom, a sanctuary of a space (with en suite with bath down a few steps,) and a spot where breakfasts are taken in bed, now in retirement years.

That same three-storey bay window is also the making of the main reception room directly underneath, with a dining table set into it in a room perhaps over 30’ deep and, again, the same shaped bay is down at basement level, in what’s now an optional lower level bedroom.

The family say they moved a son’s bedroom down from the attic level down to the basement as, in young adulthood his habit of coming home to bed at 3am and rambling up to the top floor got a nuisance. The freedom of a basement virtually to himself as a nester appears to have been a win-win for both generations.

Over the years (decades, centuries) it has only been associated with a handful of Cork families, including that of a Joshua Beale, with the Quaker Beale family of timber merchants also associated with the 1820 Myrtle Hill House on its immediate left on Lover’s Hill, while the surname was also appended to a lane Beale’s Hill from the mid-1800s, leading down between high stone walls from the Middle to Lower Glanmire Roads.

When originally built it was even larger, but one section of the end-terrace house was separated off at one stage, perhaps over a century ago, to create another mid-terrace distinct home of identical vintage, and now barely missed from this still-sizeable ‘half.’ This expansive house of 4,200 sq ft was owned in the mid-1900s by the Cross family, (Fergus and Dorothy) associated with Cross & Sons garage business in the city centre, and became a family home for their three children, Tom, Jane and Dorothy.

Daughter Dorothy Cross is one of Ireland’s leading artists (1993 Venice Biennale,) with works in the Tate Modern in London, IMMA and the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin, and has collaborated with scientist sibling Tom on projects too.

Cross later produced image-laden art books of her family’s life in boats and the sea at Fountainstown, and of the first 17 years of her formative life in the family home Montenotte House where she recalls the high enclosing sandstone walls, the view of city, river and sky, specific plants and trees, a glasshouse on the lower terrace and, the landing suspended “between upper arches and a lower hall.” It’s likely the artist is still quite in thrall to the house (she called the evocative book, simply, Montenotte) and has revisited it with the current owners on several occasions, they add, however opting to stay more anonymous themselves as they prepare to sell and trade down (clue: one’s a now-retired lawyer.)

Montenotte House is listed as an early autumn 2024 launch with estate agent Catherine McAuliffe of Savills, who guides the very well-kept home — albeit thankfully a bit of a timepiece too — at €1.15 million, to include an adjacent old mews garage with mezzanine.

Montenotte House has parikng nearby in an old mews garage with mezzanine

Apart from its quite remarkable good health, and artistic presentation, the home has a host of internal surprises not least of which is the remarkable double height hallway (talk about a breathtaking entrance statement), the mix of formal rooms, more homely ones, service rooms, and period trim, it’s all quite easy to live with.

“It’s been a manageable home,” say the fit and able owners now in their mid to late 70s and who not only made full and enjoyable use of the house, but also salvaged and saved the gardens with their specimen trees from overgrowth and neglect when they took it on, possibly naively, with children later coming in tow.

They’ve been brought back to verdant life by its care, cultivation and curating and appreciative owners of the past 46 years, gently scythed through by easily navigating paths past ferns and Dicksonia tree ferns (wrapped up in winter fleeces to save them from frosts), with tender agave plants, camellia, an ancient copper beech, hydrangeas and climbing hydrangeas up a house wall, magnificent magnolia, roses and rambling rectors, as well as a veteran Irish yew — everything, in fact, from A-Z, from acers to ‘zaleas.

Hall's Pictorial: the Italianate Montenotte House on Lover's Walk has this extraordinary entrance hall. Agent Catherine McAuliff of Savills guides the 4,200 sq ft elegant home at €1.15m

Catherine McAuliffe of Savills says it’s one of the most historic homes in Cork city and, unusually curiously enough, it’s one of two that has been called Montenotte House: the other, even larger was the 1870-built Montenotte House, (now more commonly called St Raphael’s), also Italianate, built for a Mayor of Cork Francis Lyons and, curiously/coincidentally, with an even more impressive main hall with tiers of polished marble columns and arcades.

Back at ‘this’ Montenotte House, the mellow yellow hall also is the centrepiece, but the main and well-proportioned reception rooms are stunners too, full of period details, ornate plasterwork, fretwork, good fireplaces, loads and loads to engage the eye.

Even though it stretches to over 4,000 sq ft, it’s all pretty much usable, with bedrooms options (out of five+) upstairs, at attic/roof level (with great views over the east roof profile and copper cladding to the harbour), and down in the bone-dry, easily accessed basement, with a large bay-windowed bedroom, and clutch of service rooms, coal hole/fuel store, wine cellar and laundry with some feature, original terracotta floor tiling.

It’s a protected structure, and thus is BER exempt. Some windows have been replaced, the key bay windows are still original sashes, however, and it has gas central heating, plus a homely kitchen with 1970s formica kitchen (Murrays? German?) that next owners are likely to replace/upgrade or relocate, perhaps to the basement and opening to the gardens?
VERDICT: Over its time, Montenotte House has seen the spread of Cork and suburbs, the steady development of the Marina from early reclamation ‘Navigation wall’ days, and now looks out over cleared docklands sites for many hundreds of new riverside apartments, whenever they arrive.

With its Italianate elan, Montenotte House is yet pure Cork, past, present and future.