Cork City period home beside Shakey Bridge hits market for €1.45m

Mount Vernon, a riverside treasure beside Cork’s iconic Shakey Bridge, blends unspoiled period charm with deep-rooted city history

Mount Vernon is a Sunday's Well classic

Sunday's Well, Cork City
€1.45 million
Size	295 sqm (3,175 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	E1

THERE must be an irony in the fact that a second-generation civil engineer ended up living beside a structure with a title almost guaranteed to rattle his professional nerves and instincts — the much-cherished Mount Vernon is a Sunday’s Well home snuggling right up to Cork city’s iconic ‘Shakey Bridge.’

Mount Vernon is a Sunday's Well classic

The famed suspension pedestrian bridge over the River Lee’s north channel is known properly as Daly’s Bridge, but far more widely as the Shakey Bridge because of its wibbly wobbly wonder swaying nature: It links the salubrious Sunday’s Well suburb to the Mardyke, next to Fitzgerald Park, a location dear to the hearts of Corkonians everywhere, as well as to visitors.

Great shakes setting

Leeside’s Shakey Bridge is one of the most-photographed settings in and around the city, and featured affectionately as a location-marker in the 2016 film and subsequent TV series The Young Offenders:

Brief exposure of Cork's Young Offenders

It also means that this elegant home, Mount Vernon, has also been widely circulated at home and abroad as a backdrop.

Dating to 1840, the detached riverside Mount Vernon is one of Sunday’s Well’s better-spotted river-fronting homes, not just because of its proximity to Daly’s Bridge but also due to the attractive novelty of its architectural detailing, roof crenellation to the west, façade, with window bays to the city side to the east, and south- and river-facing at the front, and its highly distinctive mid-level window treatment with what’s known as ogee-headed windows framed in red brick.

Gee ogee

The ogee shape, with both convex and concave ‘S’ curves, dates back almost 1,000 years to Islamic architecture, and enjoyed later Gothic and Victorian revivals in the 19th century, when Mount Vernon tested its builder’s and glazier’s skills, mixing many varied window shapes on its three levels, as well as to the side and rear.

Interior grace

And, gratifyingly, the array of windows — shaped from Gothic to round headed to ogee-arched and lattice style — are all still here today, in tremendous condition, testament to appreciation by a succession of mindful owners who curated this home that stands out from the crowd, as much for its authenticity as for its aspect.

For much of the 20th century, and possibly before it, Mount Vernon (also officially No 68 Sunday’s Well Road) was associated with the Guy family who had built up a noted business in Cork city in printing, lithography, photography, and other ink-related skills and services.

The latest family owners were the Walsh family, engineer John and his wife Claire, with the Walsh family also having long roots in Sunday’s Well (living at No 47 Sunday’s Well Road) and who got the chance to buy here some 40 years ago after it had temporarily been split into three units, one lived in by an older generation of the Guys until the family-to-family handover.

John Walsh’s father, Henry (Harry) Walsh, had been professor of civil engineering in UCC from the early 1920s up until the 1950s, and also established an engineering practice with its offices initially in Sunday’s Well: Venerable items of engineering curiosity, as well as a considerable library, still adorn the gentle, and much-buffed timepiece that is Mount Vernon.

The family’s appreciation of Mount Vernon spanned its aesthetic and architecture, as well as the very special setting right next door to the Shakey Bridge, say family members.

The couple also clearly cherished the stepped garden, thoughtfully planted up and maintained, with as much attention back in the day to trees, flowers, and shrubs, as well as to vegetables and fruit: the late John Walsh was a keen strawberry grower, thereby either wittingly or unwittingly continuing a long local heritage and horticultural link as Sunday’s Well was known back in the 18th century for its vast strawberry beds…. hence the name of nearby Strawberry Hill in Shanakiel.

The berries

Mount Vernon comes to the market this week as an executor sale with agents Johnny O’Flynn and Ann O’Mahony of Sherry FitzGerald, who launch it at €1.45m.

At that, it’s pitched into good company of €1m-plus sales in the wider Sunday’s Well area and where, traditionally, those making the more significant sums are those with river frontage/direct access the Lee’s north channel.

Lovely Leeside

Five of the six €1m-plus Sunday’s Well sales visible on the Price Register are individual homes with that all-important river/garden: One, Woodlawn, made €2.195m back a decade ago, down from a Celtic Tiger times peak sale of €5m (close to an all-time Cork city house sale record) while Sherry FitzGerald also sold Verulam/No 58 Sunday’s Well Road the following year, in 2017 for a recorded €1.4m.

The strongest recent price was the €1.665m paid for Hazelhurst/No 46 in 2023, while a detached called Inglenook made €1.26m in 2022.

Mount Vernon and Inglenook

Curiously, Inglenook shares a lineage with Mount Vernon, as it was built by the Guy family in the 1920s to the side of No 68 Mount Vernon, noted in these pages in 2022 and also with an address as 68A Sunday’s Well Road.

New money as well as old money values these venerable old homes, and buyers typically span academia, medicine, and hospital-based consultants, as well as those who have made sums in tech and finance and want to put a share of it into bricks and mortar.

The sale offer of a nearby classic, West View House, aka the Red House, graced these pages last month, offered in a fully restored and upgraded condition via Sherry FitzGerald’s Johnny O’Flynn with a €1.825m AMV, for a 3,800sq ft five-to six-bed home with views to the Shakey Bridge on its city side, and to Wellington Bridge in the opposite direction.

First viewings only start at the Red House this month once its mindful tenants move out, and there’ll be a huge appeal to many as it’s in walk-in condition for next occupants. Mr O’Flynn says he has very keen interest already lined up eager to view, despite its upper echelon price level as it is indeed a sort of local prize or trophy property.

Mount Vernon is no less a prize, and Sherry FitzGerald expect many people — or at least those with €1.5m to €2m to spend on a home for life — who view one of the properties will also view the other.

Those who do will compare the contemporary edge of the larger, West View/Red House with the utter period integrity of Mount Vernon.

Both are BER-exempt and both have off-street parking in garages, a feature that gives them an extra lift in Sunday’s Well where not every waterside home has a secure off-street place for a horseless carriage or a place to wire in an EV car charger.

WestView/Red House also listed with Sherry FitzGerald

Like many of its Sunday’s Well neighbours, Mount Vernon more-or-less turns its back to the world and passers-by on its doorstep, with no more than a modest access doorway as well as a garage door just to the west of the access point (and steps) down along its high boundary wall the Shakey Bridge.

That’s in stark contrast to its familiar, ornamental render and window brick-framing façade facing the Lee’s north channel opposite the Mardyke. While its building “envelope” is one of two very different halves of faces, what’s inside is all of a piece.

Simply, it’s a beauty, a well-polished period home gem, never significantly altered but clearly always minded and it’s likely the most recent owners adopted the philosophy of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” a bit like a vintage car that’s always been serviced, kept garaged, and never needed a rebuild (in contrast, the Red House needed a significant rebuild, and got it).

Once past the plain portal of the door onto the street, Mount Vernon is entered via a small glazed porch with encaustic-tiled floor, over a lower level rear service yard with old stores tucked into the hillside, very much a Sunday’s Well riverside residence feature.

This entry level has three principal rooms, two substantial ones with wide window bays, all have fireplaces, the third is a library/home office right now and there’s a good-size bathroom here too.

The stairs runs east/west to the back of the house (the floor plan dating to the 1840s is as relevant today for any home with views to the south) and the lower ground level has a plain kitchen, unfussed, with lots of wood panelling, a dining room, a bedroom overlooking the garden/terraces, and a utility room with side external access.

There’s also more immediate access to the south-facing terrace from the mid-set dining room, and the top floor holds three bedrooms (the centre one has three sash windows in a wide bay and patterned ceiling, plus a shower room with old tiled floor and William Morris-style wallpaper above wainscoting.

Elsewhere, original and gleaming wood panelling is also a feature, as in the stairwell (where there’s an ornate, tall arched coloured glass nine-paned window on a return), adding to the overall air of times moving at a slower pace than in the world outside its doors.

That easy-going ‘retreat from the world’ feel is as readily appreciated in the mature gardens which drop down to bound the River Lee (salmon, anyone?) with wending paths and a lovely glasshouse for plant propagation and the growing of vines, tomatoes, and strawberries for new occupants’ salad days ahead.

VERDICT: Some great shakes, it’s as exquisitely Cork as it gets...