Just €280,000 buys a roadside suite of buildings and stores in Cork's Firmount

YOU don’t  have to be community minded to buy into Firmount Cross — but apart from a fascinating property mix and huge heritage, and the prospect of a warm local welcome, there’s also pretty much of a bargain for the right buyer.

How about over 5,000 sq ft of buildings, over a century of business pedigree, gardens waiting to spring back into life, and a whole row of houses empty long enough to qualify for vacant property grants?

A commutable location with a local shop next door, a modern national school across the road with its own running track, plus a thriving creche up the hill? All for just €280,000? Where else would you get it, only at Firmount, Donoughmore, a 25km skip north of Cork city and past Blarney.

The mix is listed with estate agent Michael McKenna, acting for the Murphy family who first opened a seeds and farm provisions business, stores, and pub here  at Firmount  in 1921, with an entrepreneurial streak shown by Michael J Murphy, who went on to run his own haulage trucks for farm produce, and employed over 20 in the multi-faceted, community-grounded enterprises.

MJ would sell the seed in jute bags in spring to farmers and buy back the grain in bulk and other produce in the autumn,
recalls Ann Murphy, nee Henchy, who grew up at Hill Farm at Carrigrohane, across the Lee, also just west of the city, in a spot that’s now home to the Irish Guide Dogs.

Ann trained in midwifery and worked in public health before having to give up her job after she married into the Murphy family in the 1960s, after meeting the love of her life, Pat.

 She’d give Alice Taylor a run for her money (or, John B Keane) in terms of her descriptions of her life experiences:

There’s a book in her life and times. Sample chapter: MJ Murphy had three sons, one of whom died early, and two daughters who already worked in the business.

Ann moved to Donoughmore and the hectic activity at Firmount Cross only to move back to the city for a bit, and back in again. Let’s just say relationships with some of the in-laws needed to be clarified.

Things improved after that, and business and family life progressed on a more equitable footing, with Ann making a home out of one of the building by the store. 

She and Pat had three children, and a garden at the back of house. Workmen in the stores were fed from here, up to three meals a day at peak harvest times, a local woman Bobsy came to Ann and Pat two days a week to mind their smallies, and time passed.

Eventually, Pat sold the seeds and provisions business to Dairygold, who still operate nearby. The next generation of Murphy family got reared, and other elements of the store’s business wound down.

At one stage, MJ stopped selling newspapers after finding a distaste for the ‘filth’ in some of the English titles (the Cork Examiner survived the cull). The next door shop, Peg O’Donovan’s. took over the paper sales and still trades today, and Ann — who now lives with her daughter — says Peg was the rock  of the community, “an institution in  all of our lives”.

Institution? 

Ann might as well have been talking about this roadside hub and homestead, MJ Murphy’s, now seeking new energy, and with heart as well as hearth, a timepiece pub with terrazzo walls and floors, riverside gardens, and roots in the community that welcomed her in.

VERDICT: All this, with Vacant Homes and SEAI grants to help? What more could an enterprising person want? Seed capital?