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Weir View: €1.25m Sunday's Well home has stunning outlook over Cork city's southside

Weir View has a stunning outlook over Cork city’s southside and is a 'S'well' for top Leeside living 
Weir View: €1.25m Sunday's Well home has stunning outlook over Cork city's southside

(very John Far Well, Cork Left) Weir View Bridge 1929 Roche Vincent's Daly's In Pictured Sunday's And From Pictures: St Church,

Sunday's City Cork Well,

€1 25m

Size

Sq 294 (3,165 Sq Ft) M

Bedrooms

5

Bathrooms

4

Ber

D1

Sandwiched between two vastly different Sunday’s Well houses, the mid-1800s Italianate gem called Lee Villa and the 21st century award winning pairing of contemporary homes by star Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey is Weir View — no slouch itself at all.

Set behind a high screening wall just west of St Vincent’s Church, on a sort of topographical shelf, among the tiers of ground set on the city’s south-facing hill’s slopes, Weir View is a three-storey, five-bed home with private gardens, off-street parking in a garage, has a hidden garden room in its mature side grounds, and has unmistakable Cork city views and vista from its imperious height.

Weir below
Weir below

Dating back a century or more, Weir View fits in a surprising 3,100 sq ft and more thanks to being three-storey, and its main, southern facade has an irregular scattering of windows, 10 in all, or 11 including double doors down at ground level, for patio access off a drawing room, with electric awning.

Weir View faces full south
Weir View faces full south

If starting with a clean slate, it’scertain its design would feature vastly more glazing: might it happen now, in next ownership?

After more than a few decades owned and cared for by a family with offspring now flown the coop, Weir View comes to market with a €1.25m price guide cited by Ann O’Mahony of Sherry FitzGerald, who have a track record at and above this sort of price level locally, especially for Sunday’s Well homes on the river side of the road.... the more monied side, let it be said.

Bright side entrance
Bright side entrance

The location is naturally enough pretty ace, within a 10-15 minute walk of the city centre, and of hospitals like the Mercy and Bon Secours. Then, piling positives on top of that is the privacy, the parking, the aspect to the back — pure sunshine when the clouds part — and the panorama of views, near and far.

Window on the world....well, a Cork bit of it anyway
Window on the world....well, a Cork bit of it anyway

It looks out over the cast-iron crested ridge of the classic Victorian Lee Villa, aka 21 Sunday’s Well Road on its city side/slightly under it, a prized period property and a private home to a city architect for decades.

Weir View St. Vincent's Church, Sunday's Well, Cork pictured from Daly's Bridge in 1929
Weir View St. Vincent's Church, Sunday's Well, Cork pictured from Daly's Bridge in 1929

The views extend down towards the Mardyke, the River Lee’s north channel weir by Sunday’s Well Tennis and Boating Club, and UCC owned lands at the old distillery by the North Mall, St FinBarre’s Cathedral and over to the entrance of UCC, and likely to be glimpsed is the acclaimed Glucksman Art Gallery, cantilevered amid the trees in UCC’s wooded grounds.

That gallery — one of Cork’s best 21st century buildings, nominated after its 2005 completion for the prestigious Stirling Prize, is one of several works done for UCC by O’Donnell + Tuomey (ODT), and they also did the Student Hub, and the pedestrian, Cavanagh Bridge through its lower campus grounds. (ODT also did the award-wining St Angela’s girls’ secondary school, like a base camp half way up the vertiginous St Patrick’s Hill.)

Weir View 
Weir View 

Looking over the ODT architecture collection at UCC is Weir View, and its next-door neighbour, a pairing of two very box-like ODT-designed private houses, built for several generation of the one family, with the larger of the linked pairing reimagining the ancient Irish ‘tower house,’ in a four-storey tower-like wing.

Mixed periods and designs. Image: O'Donnell + Tuomey, Weir View on on the far right hand side
Mixed periods and designs. Image: O'Donnell + Tuomey, Weir View on on the far right hand side

There’s clearly a cluster of homes up on this height with values in the million+ and multi-million euro price bracket. Back in the ‘boom years’ one at the western end, Woodlawn, on substantial river-fronting grounds, sold for over €5 million and on a subsequent resale featured here over no less than six pages.

Even if the market had dipped (dived, really) and largely recovered since, the location is — like the views — evergreen…has been now for two centuries, and rightly so.

Warm feel to one of the reception rooms
Warm feel to one of the reception rooms

Sherry FitzGerald’s Cork MD Ann O’Mahony and colleague Tirza Hourihan can expect a good cross section of prospective buyers to show up here for viewings.

The setting has always been favoured by UCC academics and staff, but now many are priced out from buying at the upper echelons, while medics are the reliable stand-by, and have been strong players in the city’s €1m to €1.5m bracket in locations like College Road/Orchard Road, the Model Farm Road, greater Bishopstown, and the more niche Sunday’s Well.

Kitchen with Aga is to the rear
Kitchen with Aga is to the rear

Tech types will also feature surely, given the strength of the sector in the southern city and the proximity of Apple up the road in hill-crowning Hollyhill.

For their money, or anyone else’s at Weir view they’ll get a very well kept home with up to five bedrooms (three in the middle, two up top), bathrooms on all three levels, two bright reception rooms, a rear kitchen/diner with dark-green Aga and brick mantle, small home office and a pantry.

There’s lots of attractive architectural details, coved ceilings, floors, doors, fireplaces, and each level has a central hall or landing, while the entry point at ground level is on the east/city side with overhead angular roof lantern.

This property’s name, Weir View, is outlined in angled metal against a red brick background on the boundary with the public road; near neighbour UCC’s music department at St Vincent’s Retreat House has capacious off-street parking, previously developed by the Vincentian order who built the striking church structure in the early 1850s.

Garden room
Garden room

Seen from the city centre in evening time silhouette form, the church structure is an iconic Cork image: seen from the Mardyke, St Vincent’s forms part of a fascinating collage that continues with Lee Villa, the ODT glazed and concrete mismatched twin tower 21st century pairing and, in their midst, Weir View.

Writing's on the wall?
Writing's on the wall?

VERDICT: a low-key Sunday’s Well stunner. Will it go all glassy with a design revamp or even more significant, radical change in next ownership? Answers please, on a large cheque…

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