Inside €2m Cork home with garden stretching to Atlantic Pond and river glimpses

GROWING up, the two little girls at Woodview thought the ducks in Atlantic Pond in Cork City were their very own pets — after all, they were almost literally in their back yard, just over the back wall of this c 200-plus-year-old period beauty, on over an acre of tranquillity.

Pic: Larry Cummins.

“The only traffic sound you hear is the occasional ship’s horn on the river when they pass by, you can see their lights at night and glimpse them through the trees,” says the now-trading down owner of the so-privately set home Woodview: 

Woodview is one of a private trio of homes off Barrington’s Avenue by the Atlantic Pond

It’s one of three backed by a short private cul de sac off Barrington’s Avenue, an off-beat lane in the heart of Ballintemple, steeped in history.

The ‘lane’, home to houses little and large, links the Blackrock Road to the Atlantic Pond and witnessed the development of the city’s downriver ‘Navigation Wall’ in the 18th and 19th centuries to create the leafy Marina, now unofficially, and possibly officially, Cork City’s most loved and appreciated outdoor amenity area.

Internal arch and fine fireplaces

Tens of millions of euro are being poured into transport upgrades and amenities, with the 1.8km Marina Promenade from Centre Park Road to Blackrock village, the delivery of Holland Park with extensive play and outdoor gym facilities, walking routes around Barrington’s Folly, timber deck bridge by Páirc Uí Chaoimh, more than 10,000 trees and plants bedded down … and it’s all on the doorstep of Woodview.

Woodview is in good company

“As soon as we saw it I knew I wanted it,” says the vendor now, after a 40-year span living here, and almost effectively rescuing a grande old dame with heritage going back to the glory days of Cork’s merchant princes and traders, who in some cases could watch the progress of their businesses and fortunes in the passage of shipping traffic on the Lee, from precious perches in and around Blackrock, and over the river in Montenotte.

Woodview was a merchant family’s home and according to its owner is likely to predate the adjacent 1820s-built Ardeen on its city site, and the c 1810 Lisnalee on the Blackrock side, one of the area’s finest Georgian originals.

Work is advancing on upgrades around the perimeter of the Atlantic Pond to match the 1.8km Marina Promenade

Lisnalee sold in 2015 for €2.6m; Ardeen sold for €1.45m, later, in 2020 and even visible externally has had very major upgrades done to it since, possibly as much at as its purchase price five years back.

More recently, No 1 Barrington’s Avenue, aka Sunnyside, a modern rebuild on a corner site with the Blackrock Road has sold for its 2024 AMV of €1.75m, but has yet to appear on the Property Price Register.

Private avenue

Into this well-heeled mix sails Woodview, listed with a €2m guide price with estate agent Dominic Daly who has known it well for years and describes it as “magnificent, in a most desirable, sought-after location. It’s practically a hidden gem”.

These homes have substantial lower tiered grounds

It’s on very extensive grounds, over an acre, in two sections, all walled as is Ardeen next door, and Woodview’s former dower house on the Blackrock side. All three have slalom-like back/rear gardens, dropping down and away from the dwellings to the Atlantic Pond/Holland Park, secured by high and very old stone walls: there’s a touch of the grand Sunday’s Well homes with their gardens down to the river, only transposed, on a different side of the Lee, one upriver of the city, the other, here, as the river flows to meet Cork harbour and the sea past Blackrock.

Woodview can hold its head up with many Blackrock homes of the 19th century, and got extensive work done over the past 40 years and remains in robust good shape.

Today, in the affluent 2020s, with Blackrock a scorching hot property location, it’s likely whoever buys it will do a further round of spending in this ‘location for life’ setting.

They’d do well to go easy, though as it has huge charms and an authentic patina of age, with original stout front door, lovely chimneypieces and formal reception rooms left and right of the hall, while its other accommodation is asymmetric and idiosyncratic, with four characterful bedrooms over the top two floors (one en suite), bathrooms placed by the south-facing rear, off the stair returns with the top-most all-glazed one home to a jetted bath, overlooking the level, sun-trap walled garden.

Jetted bath up on the top floor is a look-out perch

During the family’s time here, they added a sun room to the back/south, off the kitchen (redone in the past few years, with pale granite tops on units and island) and squeezed in a spiral stairs for a first floor wing retreat, a former maid’s quarters, now with apex window and wood-burning stove, warm in summer and in winter, a real den.

Overall condition is very good, with details like corniced ceilings, internal arch, marble fireplaces (one grey the other paler), replaced double glazed sash windows on the northern/front façade, dados, etc, appropriately furnished with period pieces, gleaming mahogany and art work.

Externally, Woodview has its own long walled approach avenue along the side of its more formal and well-tended south garden, with a rosy-cheeked apple tree this year providing a bumper crop of eaters.

Apple of owner’s eye

It’s all got great privacy and peacefulness, whilst being within walking distance of Ballintemple, Blackrock, and the city centre, and it also has good parking/turning with views down over the lower grounds to the Atlantic Pond (huge potential on this side of the wall too for fun and games, maybe a garden pavilion?), to Tivoli and with Marina/river glimpses.

VERDICT: Woodview is all set to be a long-time and well-feathered home for some lucky Cork ducks. Vive la Marina