Cobh, Cork Harbour €1.15 million Size 500 sq m + 184 sq m (5,920 sq ft + 1,980 sq ft) Bedrooms 6 Bathrooms 6 BER Exempt KNOCKEVEN House is large slice of Cobh history. With roots back to the mid 1800s, the sizeable Victorian-era Italianate villa home on exceptionally private grounds with trees almost as old as the house itself was lived in by the Harty family, the Barrys and the Rushbrookes – the latter giving their name to the Cobh suburb with its remove for the bustle of the quays, and with a commuter train station almost on its doorstep.
More recently, Knockeven House has been home to the Mulhaire family who bought it in 1986, who reared a family of three children here who had acres of play space, trees to climb, a basement to hide out in, and the fun of a level lawn for ball kicking, on what earlier had been a grass tennis court, indicative of the grandeur the house was first built to enjoy. Parents Pam and John had come to Cobh in the 1970s to run a very successful supermarket, a Londis, in Cobh’s Newtown, and later bravely bought Knockeven House which at the time almost 40 years ago needed work. First, it was their home, later with children grown and entrepreneurial in their core they decided to open it as an upmarket, luxury guesthouse after they sold the shop.
Laois man John might have had ideas of retirement: Kilkenny woman Pam had other ideas, so they engaged the services of interior designer Fiona O’Keeffe, put an assured mark on the house’s main bedrooms.