From ruin to remarkable: The father-daughter restoration of €385k No 1 Quaker Road

HOME hunters don’t always rely on ‘the bank of Mum and Dad’ to get on the property ladder.

Time and effort from ‘the folks’ can help too! 

Thus it was in the case of the rebirth of No 1 Quaker Road, a venerable, stone-built home with its bones exposed, much admired by passers-by, and where the work done by the builders and tradespeople was complemented by the father of one of the current owners.

In the army, he was able to add grunt effort to the works being done on the 200-year-old house when his daughter bought here as a young, single woman, back in 2010. The house was in a very basic state, but in a great location, within a trot of Cork City centre via Douglas Street.

Now,  circumstances having changed in the intervening years;  the owner is selling to trade up with her husband and their infant son, likely going east of the city and ready to roll up their sleeves all over again (on board again, Dad?!) for the next life chapter.

By some coincidence of timing, their much-loved Quaker Road home comes to market in the same week as the historic Douglas Street area and its community spirt were rightly eulogised by architect Hugh Wallace and his crew last Sunday in the Great House Revival television show.

The show followed the fortunes of artist Cora Murphy, when she renovated and converted a 

former ‘front room’ shop at No 42 Douglas Street into her own home and studio, but where the renovation costs soared past the €120,000 budget to over €270,000, on top of her €182,000 vacant property purchase.

This home, No 1, around the corner from the junction with Douglas Street and Summerhill South was bought at pretty much the property market’s nadir in terms of crash values, for €102,5000, according to the Price Register, but was a very different proposition, again a raw canvas at that time.

Originally a three-bed, it’s now a two-bed with a new, enlarged main bathroom with tucked-in corner bath, plus separate shower, while one of the two bedrooms — which are both to the front of the property — has a shower room en suite.

At ground are reception rooms left and right: The one to the left, with a stove and rear patio access, is the main, relaxing living space, while the other is a dining room to the front, with kitchen behind.

Both rooms are bright, as they are now double aspect, after clever reconfiguring of the previous floor plan.

It’s all been done with style and panache, especially the way as much light as possible is brought into the kitchen end, thanks to pushing out the back wall an extra few feet to create a light well.

This has glazing in cedar frames that get light from above, and from the side, too, where there’s a hinged, casement-style window opening section atop three, neat, glass panels, giving oblique views into a compact, but verdant, courtyard/patio.

Here, at the back, there’s a stone slip finish on the wall, in contrast to the old worn brick visible on the exterior boundary in the paved courtyard, with bulb lighting in the dense ivy growth, and there’s also an ornamental bamboo, among other plants, in a cozily enclosed area just big enough for a couple to sit and dine al fresco.

The full overhaul, done more than 15 years ago, included reroofing, replumbing and bathrooms, a new cream gloss kitchen, hardwood flooring and tiling, insulation, chimney lining, gas central heating, — the works, really — along with well-above spec solid-oak joinery in doors, architraves and skirtings.

Notable, too, is the quality of wood used in the replacement, double-glazed sash windows and rear French doors between the living room and courtyard, in cedar, done by Riordan’s Joinery on the Bandon Road — a large site now occupied by a substantial, purpose-built housing development, Nido Ashlin House, accommodating 500 students.

Very much its own entity is the two-bed No 1 Quaker Road, notable for its stripped-back stone-and-brick façade, with lime pointing and a solitary, red, sandstone chunk amid the rest of the wall of limestone.

This continues a Cork tradition of acknowledging the stone types north and south of the River Lee, seen in larger examples in the likes of the North Cathedral, and in the even older, St Ann’s Shandon, the iconic Cork steeple with over 400 years of weather under its belt and famed bells.

Older still than Shandon is the cemetery that gave Quaker Road its name, the Quaker faith’s Religious Society of Friends Burial Ground, also known as the Friends’ Cemetery, dating to 1668, and still in use today, with a meeting house for worship on Summerhill South.

Records show that No 1 was part of an estate that dates back to the early 1700s, built in limestone and with historical links to Cromwellian soldiers, mayors of Cork and a wealthy, mid-1800 Munster landowning family.

By the the early 1900s, the property was occupied by a resident midwife, who delivered many local babies here, and the 1912 census shows that it was rented by the Murphy Evergreen bacon factory, serving as a home for their manager and his family. When the bacon factory closed in the early 1990s, “the house was neglected and derelict until 2010, when I fell in love with the old features, and decided to purchase the property and bring it back to its former glory”, says one of the departing young family currently in situ, baby and all.

The father-and-daughter work took 11 months back in 2010, and a second round was undertaken in 2015, when the stonework was stripped back and repointed by a professional stone mason to expose original white limestone, “with a single, signature red sandstone piece, to represent Cork red-and-white colours”, they note with local Cork pride.

Putting no 1 Quaker Road up for sale as spring 2025 is sprung, estate agent Johnny O’Flynn, of Sherry FitzGerald, describes the immaculate, 870 sq ft two-bed home as “a charming, historical, stone-fronted, semi-detached townhouse, offering an old-world appeal, with all modern conveniences: It’s the perfect city pad within a few minutes’ walk of Cork City centre.”

He acknowledges a South Parish setting off Summerhill South as “one of Cork’s oldest areas, steeped in history ,” while also noting the recent arrival of an award-winning niche residential scheme, Quaker Court, a few doors away.

Winning the Cork Business Association’s ‘Best New Development’ gong, the just seven BER A-rated homes saw four sales to date (via Cohalan Downing), a two-bed townhouse making €410,000, another making €400,000, a one-bed duplex fetching €400,000 and one of the three contemporary Quaker Court, box-like detacheds making €585,000, with three similar 954 sq ft two-beds left to sell.

No 1 Quaker Road will attract a different type of buyer than those picking off the new-builds a few doors away.

The appeal, as well as the aesthetic, is different, with this easy-on-the-eye charmer with several centuries of Cork history brought up to a C2 BER, insulated, with stove and working fireplace in the dining area and in the en-suite main bedroom directly overhead.

It’s a stone’s throw from Douglas Street, and the city centre’s just beyond, via various routes and bridges.

University College Cork’s within a walk via Barrack Street, the bus depot is up the road on the site of the old Cork & Macroom Railway offices, switched to its ‘omnibus’ role when the rail service ceased 95 years ago — truly, this is a home that has seen some changes.

VERDICT: Number one in more ways than one.