Calling all movers, shakers and quakers to artful Cork city home with surprising big garden

HOUSEHOLDERS on Quaker Road were practising sustainability long before it became a buzzword for companies to generate brand loyalty. Blessed with back gardens of unexpected magnitude, they had the scope for both animal husbandry and growing their own in the heart of Cork city.

At least one household was known to have reared the occasional sheep, but pigs were the big thing. With the Evergreen Bacon Factory just a couple of hundred yards away, it made sense to cultivate the raw materials.

More sensitive souls may have felt slightly queasy come Christmas dinner, with the squeals of pigs still ringing in their ears on the way to meet their maker.

You’d never guess walking along Quaker Road that this narrow throughway, linking Summerhill South to Evergreen Street and Tower Street, had capacity for anything other than the snug-fitting terraced houses that front it, but like so many of Cork city’s older, inner streets, there is much that lies behind and that lies beneath.

The owners of No 39 Quaker Road found much to rejoice in when they bought their home 33 years ago.

“The garden is what really sold it to us. We had been living in an apartment on Douglas St, where we didn’t have a garden.

“When we came to look at the house on Quaker Road, it was home to an elderly couple and it wasn’t in great shape, but we took one look at the garden and the nice roses and thought ‘hell ya’,” the owners say.

Having bought the house, it took 13 large builder’s skips to clear it out.

That included debris from the back garden, where a derelict old outhouse with corrugated iron roof had been used as a pigsty.

“I found husks [from pig meal] when I was digging the ground. All the houses around here had pigsties and they would have supplied the bacon factory on Evergreen Road or they’d have had a pig slaughtered at Christmas for ham and a few bob,” says the man of the house.

Pig meal wasn’t the only find. He also dug up what he reckons was a famine pot, a 200lb cast iron pot, used now to grow roses. He reckons it’s a remnant from the Society of Friends Soup House, set up by the Quakers during the Great Famine to help feed the starving Irish. He says Quaker Road used to be known as Graveyard Lane but was renamed in honour of the Society for their efforts to alleviate the suffering. The Quakers’ meeting house is on nearby Summerhill South, having relocated there from Grattan St in 1939.

Like much of the inner city, Quaker Road has a rich urban heritage. The couple that bought No 39 appreciated this and having previously lived at Douglas St, wished to stay in the general neighbourhood.

When they bought their home in the early 1990s, it was a two up/two down property, with walls lined with layer upon layer of wallpaper and floors covered with layer upon layer of lino.

“We have pulled the place apart many times since then,” they say.

They spent about a year making it livable. Subsequent, more far-reaching changes coincided with new arrivals. For instance the decision to turn downstairs into one big open-plan space followed the arrival of their first child. By the time child number three arrived, they were contemplating moving, such was the pressure on space, but in the end, they opted to extend.

“We really didn’t want to move to the suburbs, so instead we decided to do a big extension,” says the woman of the house.

The extension went across three levels. The ground-floor former pigsty to the rear became a fully-fledged, brightly-lit artist’s workshop with raised roof and several skylights and a door to the rear garden. The man of the house, who for years designed signs for shops and pubs all over the city, could now paint in comfort. The main open-plan living space was extended backwards too, deeper into the garden. The kitchen moved back with it. Like the workshop, it’s a light-filled space, with glazing overhead and along the back wall, from where a door leads to a natural stone patio. A dazzling bougainvillea plant, brought over from France, adds a rustic charm to the kitchen, along with the countertops, forged by the artist-owner out of salvaged roof beams, when they renovated the roof while adding a third floor (they added solar panels too). 

The artist also crafted the beautiful curve of the stairs handrail and did much of the lime render on the walls of the kitchen, the curved wall of the porch, and on the huge support pillar in the middle of the open plan area. He’s responsible too for a stunning bespoke lightwell on the upper floor, using reinforced glass and steel, and you can also see his handiwork in the panels of painted glass downstairs and in the polished concrete floor of the kitchen and one of the kitchen countertops.

The back garden, a lovely blend of colour, form, and texture, also benefited from an artist’s eye, and it’s been a wonderful asset for all of the family. When the kids were growing up, it was a safe, enclosed space.

While the pigsty is long gone, the principles of sustainability are still in evidence in the salvaged stones that clad the rear wall of the workshop/artist’s studio; in the famine pot used to grow roses; in the raspberries, apple trees, and even a fig tree, which also made the trip from France.

“When I’m in the garden, I don’t feel like I’m in the city, yet the hum of city life is all around us,” says the woman of the house, who is originally from Brittany. She loved their convenience to the city centre, and the ease with which she could nip down to the English Market to pick up ingredients for cooking.

The couple’s home grew around them to embrace each new family member, including the addition of a music room at the return of the first floor, a versatile space that could be a home office/playroom/fifth bedroom/first floor sitting room under new owners. As it stands, No 39 has four bedrooms, all of them doubles, two apiece on the top two floors and a bathroom on each of these floors too.

The couple are heartbroken to be moving on, but the kids have grown up and a 2,045 sq ft house is no longer what they need. Selling No 39 is Roy Dennehy of Dennehy Auctioneers, who describes the three-storey terraced home as “truly exceptional”.

“It has remarkable, bespoke, artistic features throughout and has a highly functional and attractive layout,” he adds.

The agent says interest in houses around the city “seems to be quite strong at the moment”. Nearby, in Quaker Court, a new, gated, infill development off Quaker Road, a two bedroom brand-new detached property measuring less than 1,000 sq ft sold in July for more than €580,000. No 39 is more than twice the size, albeit it’s energy rating is a C1, while the Quaker Court home is A-rated.

Both houses have the benefit of a city centre location. The guide price for No 39 is €560,000.

VERDICT: Character in spades at this warm and inviting city centre home with some unique features and gem of a garden