A ROADSIGN approaching the southern capital for
many years carried the legend 'Welcome to Cork, Home of the Dixies.'
Well, here is the home of a Dixie.
Musician Joe Mac has had Cork at
his feet for decades but so too has his lofty St Patrick's Hill home.
The ex-Dixies singer and drummer is 50 years in showbusiness this year. "My
father got me my first drum kit in 1954, in Crowley's shop on Merchants
Quay, I've just made the last repayment on it," he says cheekily.
Still gigg(l)ing professionally with the Joe Mac band, he is about to leave
his family home of the last 25 years.
No 3 Lansdowne Terrace hits the
market with estate agent Andy Moore brother of Christy Moore and whose own
son, Gavin, is also a musician and launched his first album in Cork's Opera
House just last night.
A musical talent runs deep in the Moore
family: the blood line includes Christy and Luka Bloom, while Andy Moore is
no slouch himself with a song.
No 3 Lansdowne Terrace is going for a
little bit more than a song, carrying a €450,000 price guide, for a
three-storey 1870's-built 2,100 sq ft terraced home with five bedrooms and a
hilltop vista spanning miles.
"Both the property and Joe Mac are full of
character, and for the greater part have retained their original features,"
quips Andy Moore, adding in a lyrically fancy flight: "I intend negotiating
this sale at the right tempo, leading to a crescendo and concluding on a
high note. After all, Joe gave me the right key to start."
No 3 has
been home to legendary drummer and joke-meister Joe and Ann McCarthy since
1979. They raised three sons and a daughter here. One of their sons was
tragically killed in a car accident in the 1980s, so they also reared their
grand-daughter Amy from age four months in this period house. It was to this
uphill house that Joe Mac returned to, at all hours of the night and
morning, after gigs the length and breadth of the country.
It has two
interlinked ground floor reception rooms, a kitchen extension running out
behind and overlooking a sheltered back yard, ground floor utility with
shower area, and five bedrooms, plus bathroom and shower room.
The
property is at the very top of St Patrick's Hill, with steeple-packed views
over Cork, taking in the North Cathedral, Shandon steeple, St Vincent's in
Sunday's Well, and the County Hall off in the western suburban distance. The
city centre is just below, a rapid roll away down vertiginous St Patrick's
Hill as contestants in the recent Red Bull soapbox derby will confirm.
