Writer’s Blocks for sale as home of the late Brian Looney, former Irish Examiner editor, comes to market   

FOR the record, seemingly small but perfectly formed No 8 Thomond Square was once home to the man who oversaw a major rebrand of this newspaper, driving it through two name changes, dropping “Cork” to replace it, eventually, with the full “Irish”.

So it was that during the late Brian Looney’s seven year editorship that the Cork Examiner morphed into The Examiner and later, the Irish Examiner, before Mr Looney parted company with De Paper in 2001. Did the onetime editor of The Kerryman have the last laugh by extinguishing “Cork” from the masthead of a newspaper that had embraced its local roots since its foundation in 1841?

By all accounts he had a mighty sense of humour and a gift for storytelling. If the walls of his former home could talk, they’d probably serve up a few sensational scoops.

It was an ideal home for a man in his role, right in the beating heart of Cork city, across the road from the busy South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital, which still had an emergency department at the time Mr Looney was living in Thomond Square. Every hack worth his or her salt knows there’s never a shortage of stories in the febrile territory of an ED.

Thomond Square is steeped in history too, a befitting environment for a newspaper man, who must understand the past in order to contextualise the present. Thomond Square’s past was as former military housing, for army and police officers, associated with a barracks that used to occupy the site where now stands the South Infirmary.

Built between 1830-1840, the 19-home Victorian-era garrison square is one of the oldest of the city’s housing “estates” and has been afforded protection as the estate is listed, and all of the buildings are protected structures. This does not rule out any prospect of renovation. While their façades cannot be altered, changes have been made behind the scenes to some of the houses (check out the extension and renovation project carried out in 2018 on one of the Thomond Square homes at www.doylebrosconstruction.ie).

The estate agent selling No 8, Tim Sullivan of Timothy Sullivan & Associates, says he “can’t overstate how deceptive these homes are from the outside”.

To the passerby, they are dinky-size, but actually, no 8 is a surprisingly 120 sq m.

“From the outside it looks like a single-storey, ground-floor-only cottage,” says Mr Sullivan, “but in fact it’s really deep and has a bedroom upstairs.”

 Accommodation downstairs includes a generous L-shaped open-plan living/dining/sitting room, a kitchen with utility off it, a large bedroom and bathroom.

 Upstairs is a large bedroom which Mr Sullivan said has been part of No 8 “since God was a boy”.

Mr Sullivan describes No 8 as “architecturally pleasing”, a house with character, in a well-maintained square with a pretty central communal green area and some trees and shrubbery, and with parking. There’s outdoor space to the rear of No 8 too, in the form of a spacious paved patio with stone seating.

Apart from No 8’s Tardis qualities, the second most surprising element of this terraced house is its B3 energy rating. It’s no mean feat for a Victorian-era home to achieve this grade. For anyone interested in the property, it opens the door to more favourable green mortgage rates.

Mr Sullivan is guiding No 8 at €340,000, slightly ahead of what its neighbour, No 7, sold for in 2021, recorded on the Property Price Register at €328,000.

VERDICT: Just as a good editor doesn’t take a story at face value, home hunters need to see No 8 to appreciate it.