Tivoli, Lower Glanmire Road, Cork City €840,000 Size 417 sq m (4,500 sq ft) Bedrooms 6 Bathrooms 4 BER Exempt THE trio of Georgian houses at Bellevue Villas possibly comprises the best renovation and conservation of any period terrace in Cork city But, there’s a rival in the sheer attention to detail right on their doorstep, just on the city side, and also overlooking the leafy Marina and the River Lee in the shape of a one-off home of similar 19th century vintage, Carrig House. Originally called Bellevue House, the detached Carrig House next to the robust Tivoli/Lower Glanmire Road terrace and old coachouse also comprising this Bellevue enclave has arisen phoenix-like from the ashes of a devastating 2002 fire to be painstakingly reinstated in the assured hands of specialists Linehan Construction and their architects, and featured here mid-project in 2002. Shining bright and finished to the nth degree, Carrig House is now a finished entity, and is set to be sold this year for a sum likely well in excess of likely well in excess of €2 million with some early viewings understood to have taken place with overseas home-hunters.
In the meantime, and at a broadly more affordable price level, how’s about 3 Bellevue Villas next door, sharing the same river views and location sharing the same exclusive and expensive bridge access over the Cork-Cobh/Midleton rail line and road carraigeway? The triplets had lain low for decades, largely unlived in, before being taken gently but firmly in hand over 20 years ago by conservation engineer and lover of older buildings, Peter Haughton. The short terrace of three, backing into sandstone cliffs with woodland above separating it from leafy Lovers Walk, dates to the 1840s, and was built ever before the rail line heading east from the city from about 1860, serving Cobh (then Queenstown,) Midleton and Youghal. When the rail line did come along, a manned level crossing was provided to the select residents of the Bellevue cluster with right of access guaranteed: the historic right saw CIE having to spend upwards of €15m on a replacement bridge to what’s now Carrig House, a coachhouse, at the east end of Myrtle Hill, and to Bellevue Terrace itself.
Talk about an expensive, up-and-over driveway...
. Thus so much more handily reached today, the terrace has however kept a rather special aura of aloofness, set behind electronically controlled access gates and has its own parking options on both side of the gates, with up to four spaces coming with listing this week of the large and lovely No 3 for sale. The c 4,500 sq ft rock-solid beauty is guided at €840,000 by Paul Fenton and Ann O’Mahony of Sherry FitzGerald who have had previous resales here in the past, including that of No 3 itself both to and for a media couple back from the UK in the 2000s.
Both No 2 and No 3 Bellevue Villas have had resales over the last two decades since the original buyer Peter Haughton curated the conservation of all three, fortunate at the time that all period detailing was intact: they were simply ‘frozen in time.’ No 1, looking stunning with a rarely-seen these days striped canvas awning over its front door to protect its gloss paintwork from the sun (how old fashioned! How optimistic of summer 2023!) seems to have been the longest time of all three in its owners careful hands. Price-wise, the fortunes of all three have fluctuated with the market’s ups and downs, a bit like the tidal stretch of the Lee river less than 100 metres directly in front of their facades.
At one stage, they were put at values of €1.5m and even more, but top selling prices aren’t recorded as the transparency of the Price Register only dates to 2010, but the sale of No 2 was recorded in these pages at a sizeable for the post-crash times €700,000, and the Register shows the resale of No 2 Bellevue Villas in 2014 for €410,000 and again in 2019 for €560,000. It also shows the Haughtons’ also restored coach-house two years prior, for €362,500 in 2017.
It’s all to play for now at No 3, with its €840,000 AMV< indicative of the healthy property market, shortage of overall supply, and even more marked shortage of period homes of quality and integrity. Add in river, rowing activity and Marina and Pairc Ui Chaoimh views, a direct southerly aspect and walking distance on the flat of Cork city centre, and its burgeoning north and south quays with both Horgans Quay and Tivoli earmarked for major 21st century residential development schemes and amenities, and, really, it’s as visionary ‘future-proofed’ as it was when first built almost 200 years ago. Like its neighbours Nos 1 & 2 (it’s hard to to think of them as triplets,) it’s a big house, with three main levels above a full-self-contained basement level (with both internal and external access) and with a very useful and charming attic level also, yielding up to six bedrooms in all over its five various levels.
There’s 4,500 sq ft to play with, with stunning tall ceilinged main linked reception rooms on the main/entry level, joined/separated by a wide elegant internal arch with fluted columns and wide double doors, plus service kitchen. The next floor up has a ‘piano nobile,’ or first floor drawing room, full-width with three original, conserved small pane sash windows, and has an en suite bedroom to the back. The second floor has three bedrooms (two to the front link so one could be a nursery/dressing room?) and the rear one is en suite, while the top attic level has a bedroom, two other useful rooms under the wide roof slope (with conservations-style roof lights in the re-done slate roof).
Then at the bottom end of the tall home is the accessible basement, with many original features once more, with a bedroom, living room, bathroom and a kitchen that’s bigger than the ‘service’ kitchen on the main living level above. No 3 has views behind over its glade-like enclosed courtyard/garden, and has a private sit-out garden/gravelled area directly in front, pretty private as it’s end-of-terrace. There’s an almost communal feel to Bellevue Villas terrace’s setting, landscaped and with parking largely screened off and where planting includes Camellias, Chinese lantern, Myrtle (appropriate as neighbours include Myrtle Hill House on Lovers Walk, and Myrtle Hill terrace on the city side of the bridge), Red Hawthorn, Agapanthus Cherry and Laburnum.
VERDICT: They sure don’t build them like this anymore: Bellevue Villas is a Tivoli treasure..
