You'd half expect stiff upper lips and simmering passions of a period drama at €550k No 2 Clarence Terrace

At the top of Summerhill North, near St Luke's Cross, this flamboyantly stylish Georgian home is steeped in history and character

Sat, 12 Jul, 2025 - 00:00

Catherine Shanahan Pictures: Media Pro Cork

St Lukes, Cork city
€550,000
Size	256sq m (2,759sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	5
BER	Exempt

IF SOMEONE suddenly shouted “Lights, Camera, Action!” at No 2 Clarence Terrace, no-one would bat an eyelid.

A coach and four could pull up at the front door and not cause a stir.

Each room is like a scene from a period drama: lavishly layered and decorated, dotted with props and objets d’art, like a throwback to the gilded age.

The footnotes to the movie would read as follows: Clarence Terrace was built in the 1830s by Joshua Hargrave, grandson of Abraham, the man who built the first St Patrick’s Bridge. Joshua built the current bridge after his grandfather’s effort was swept away in a flood; the 1901 Census shows a Major General Stubbs living at No 2, with his daughter, who was born in India. She was still there by the time of the 1911 Census, but her father had passed away.

The current owner believes the entire terrace and neighbouring Clarence Place were bought at one stage by a Dr Murphy O’Connor, ancestors of the former late Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor. The doctor left a house to each of his daughters.

The owner adds that a woman whose family moved into No 2 in 1930 “and was born here shortly after, remembers her father, who was a teacher, arriving home at night and reciting passages from Shakespeare to his children assembled on the stairs”.

“She also remembers putting on plays, etc, for neighbours in the large ground floor reception room,” the owner says.

The same woman came to stay with her own four daughters while the current owner was operating No 2 as an B&B/AirBnB, which he did for two decades — until recently.

“She remembered being allowed sleep in her mother’s first-floor bedroom the night before her wedding and the sun shining through a gap in the curtain, throwing a spotlight on her wedding dress,” says the owner.

“She took it as a good omen.”

While occupants of other homes along the terrace have turned the terrifically proportioned first floor boudoir into a drawing room or piano nobile , it’s remained a bedroom at No 2 “for more than 200 years”.

Original floorboards and original fireplace tiles remain intact and tall windows look down on the river. It’s a bedroom fit for a Duke, which is fitting, as the terrace is thought to have been named in honour of Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence and St Andrews, who later became King William IV of England. Even more appropriate is the William IV library chair in the main bedroom, which came from a solicitor’s office on South Mall.

Other signature pieces salvaged from around the city also made their way to Clarence Terrace. Stained glass over the entrance door came from the former Roches Stores cafe that operated off Maylor St in the 1970s and ’80s. A mahogany bookcase in the front ground-floor drawing room is made from snooker tables salvaged from a former snooker hall in Emmet Place, now home to the Eastern Tandoori.

Mahogany bookcases to left of picture were made from snooker tables

Two octagonal tables on the upstairs landing came from the elegant marble staircase that led to a swanky tea room, ‘Talk of the Town’, above the former Savoy cinema on St Patrick’s Street. Double doors in the hallway of the basement came from AIB on South Mall; a radio operator’s chair came from the doomed RMS Celtic, the ship that ran aground on rocks off Roches Point in 1928.

There’s even a pair of binoculars from the Aud, the ill-fated German ship that made a failed attempt to smuggle arms to Irish Rebels for the 1916 Easter Rising. It’s mis-timed arrival to Tralee Bay led to the arrest of Irish nationalist Roger Casement, who was brought from Banna Strand to the RIC barracks in Ardfert, where he was treated by none other than the grand uncle of the owner of No 2 Clarence Terrace, Dr Michael (Mikey) Shanahan.

No 2’s owner has other well-known relations. His mother and father were Angela and Bill Shanahan, who bought Oriel Court (now Oriel House Hotel) in 1969 and saved it from demolition.

The Shanahans preserved its character and repurposed historic features, including a cellar-bar door from Cork City Gaol, doors from the Savoy Cinema, and furnishings from Kilkenny Castle.

“In order to safeguard the building’s future, he [Bill] opened it as a hotel in 1983 and fortunately his plan worked as it is a thriving business today,” says No 2’s owner, who was general manager at the hotel for 20 years. His late parents sold up in 2002 and it’s now owned by the Talbot Hotel Group.

THE owner of the four-bedroom property has lived at Clarence Terrace since the late ’90s and is very invested in its history. He says the location was a popular spot for sketching city panoramas in the mid-19th century. For instance, English writer and illustrator William Makepeace Thackeray, pitched up at nearby Grattan Hill in 1842 while writing The Irish Sketch Book. When you see the view from Grattan Hill and Clarence Terrace, you can see what drew the likes of Thackeray.

No 2 is high above the city, with direct line of sight down towards the river Lee, docks, wharves and railway station. Future occupants will have a ringside seat as the docklands regenerate.

The period townhouse, with 10 ft-high ceilings, has views on many levels as it’s spread over four floors. The basement level — where the hired help once lived — was extended by the current owner, out into the back yard. The extension houses a kitchen. It’s like a Vermeer still life of a domestic scene.

The graceful original rear window was re-instated into the extension and overlooks the yard.

A skylight lets more light into this back room.

An open arch leads to a dining area, and beyond it is a living room where the owner lengthened the window by adding another row of panes.

It overlooks a small, brightly-painted yard area. The living room fireplace surround was handpainted by master painter, John Holmes, whose brother Tom, also a master painter, gilded the famous salmon on top of Shandon.

Corporation painter Tom Holmes (left) helped by Michael O'Sullivan, seen here 193 ft high on Cork's Shandon Steeple, gilding the fish with laminated gold - August 1959

There are other basement rooms — a pantry off the kitchen which new owners could reconfigure, a downstairs showerroom, a corridor that leads to a “secret” tunnel (lots of storage space) that brings you to the lower front terrace. Both upper and lower terraces face south.

On the upper terrace, the main entrance door opens into an unapologetically theatrical hallway, where a combination of orange walls and dark marbling add a cinematic edge.

John Holmes, master painter, took care of the marbling. A border in the hallway is a copy of the Etruscan Border, notably used in the library of Clongowes Wood College in Co Kildare in the 1780s. It’s by David Skinner, who specialises in hand printed recreations of wallpapers and borders from famous period houses in Ireland.

“This design was discovered in a mural circa 1785 in Pompeii,” the owner says. It features intricate motifs combining human, animal, hybrid, and mythical elements, reflecting the 18th-century fascination with classical antiquity.

The owner’s fascination with the classical past (he got an ‘A’ in Latin in the Leaving Cert) and with more recent Irish history is reflected in artefacts scattered about the house, but also in his choice of most memorable guests.

“Having been educated by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart alongside the grandnephews of Michael Collins and Tom Kent, at Carraig na bhFear house and castle, the last estate of the senior branch of the MacCarthy clan [Coláiste an Chroí Naofa, also known as Carrignabhfear College] I was delighted to welcome as an AirBnB guest the grandson of Terence MacSwiney,” the owner says.

Other notables to stay over at No 2 included renowned New Zealand horseman, four-time Olympian and gold medal winner, Blyth Tait; a retired Belgian and Nato general “who stayed because he saw that a major general had resided here”; a retired member of the US Atomic Energy Commission and a head of the US Labour Court, appointed by Donald Trump in his first administration.

While No 2 is firmly rooted in the past, it has had modern upgrades, such as the installation in 1999 of underfloor heating in the lower ground floor. At the same time, the small kitchen extension was added. This year, the rear of the house was replastered and the two back kitchen areas were re-slated. Some of the sash windows have been replaced too, including three at the front of the house in 2002, while two more at the front were replaced with double glazed copies in 2020.

The owner says the only front window in need of replacement is to the front “for which there is a 50% conservation grant”.

Views from the front bedrooms are spectacular at No 2

He adds that “all the original Georgian windows at the rear of the house were refurbished in 2002 and are in good condition and all original shutters are in place on all windows”. Cast iron gutters were replaced too, imported from a UK foundry.

Selling agent Eileen Neville of Lisney Sotheby’s IR says while some refurbishment is needed, No 2 will qualify for valuable conservation grants, including the Architectural Conservation Area grant, the Built Heritage Investment Scheme and the Historic Structures Fund.

Ms Neville adds that the house “is a rare chance to own a character-filled city residence that combines history, privacy, and incredible potential”.

She highlights No 2’s mature garden too, which the owner has done a good deal to, building it up into a third, south-facing terrace, and planting it out with a glorious mix of texture and colour. There’s parking at the bottom of the garden, where once there were stables.

All of this period grace and outdoor space is in an optimal city location at the top of Summerhill North, by St Luke’s Cross, where there’s a thriving social scene, with Live at St Luke’s music venue in the neighbouring deconsecrated church, as well as Henchy’s Pub, Cork Coffee Roasters and a couple of shops and restaurants. The city centre is less than 10 minutes away as is Kent Station.