But, now after a chequered past decade of decay, and having been rescued from the point of rapidly deteriorated dereliction during the slump, (or, even from a fate similar to that of Corks Vernon Mount House, gutted last year by fire while empty,) Lotamore House is back in rude good health, and in a use which scarcely could have been thought of, at almost anytime in its last centuries of use.
With Cork Merchant Prince family generations of ownership, renting and occupation behind it, today in its new guise it is the very real point of conception and where new life starts for many, many dozens of generations and the most diverse array of families and precious prince and princess dynasties yet to come.
John Waterstone
Its the sparkling new base for the Cork Fertility Centre, arguably the countrys most advanced such clinic, after having had new life breathed into it by fertility consultant Dr John Waterstone and his wife Susan, self-confessed aficionados of old buildings, and, indeed, private family residents for almost 20 years in one of Corks old rectory homes.
Now spanning 13,000 sq ft of calm, period conserved property and utterly graceful features with purposeful, dedicated medical suites, labs, scan rooms and consulting rooms, at heart Lotamore House this spring is a cutting edge medical and fertility centre employing 55 staff.
It literally is creating and cradling life, where a new-build 1,500 sq ft lab glows with the latest embryology technology, cryopreservation storage area, with diagnostic facilities, which can detect and prevent debilitating genetic conditions being passed on to new-borns and future generations.
When opting to grow their clinic and business from a base on College Road (the Waterstones also have outreach fertility clinics in Limerick, Waterford and now Dublin too) , they could have built or bought almost anywhere.
They might have been expected to buy something more predictably medical than a down-at-heel, 215-year-old Georgian villa on a hill, with water coming through the roof, and gardens lying idle since it ceased guest accommodation uses in 2006: it had sold then for well over 3 million, with investor notions of turning the still-elegant house into a 90-bed nursing home.
(It also featured on TV news slots for a period when briefly and controversially occupied by protest group, the Rodolphus Allen Private Family Trust, after Lotamore Houses future was to be decided by receivers Deloitte, and it had been effectively squatted in also for a short spell.)
It has grown from 8,000 sq ft on the point of decline to 13,000 sq ft of immaculate space and balancing old side wings with a restored original Georgian villa done to best conservation standards under the guidance of architects, Jack Coughlan Associates.
Getting from first approach to a finished product took the best part of three years, with about half of that spent in layout, detailing and planning etc, and the other 18 months was on-site work with Rose Construction, whove been in operation in Cork for more than 30 years.
As a team effort, its delivery include re-roofing, new sash windows throughout the original building, salvage and repair of old stone such as the Wicklow granite for the steps, conservation of cast iron railings, new lime harling or dash render on the exterior walls.
In particular there was painstaking input from master joiner and carpentry craftsman Frank Gaffney, who saved the original staircase as it was about to sink after a few years of water ingress, and which had also threatened, and damaged, much of the original ceilings.
Key decorative plasterwork sections and friezes were rescued, saved and in cases copied, done by Capitol Mouldings and serve as statement pieces in the central hall, stairs and landings.
Also involved with project manager Susan Waterstone (wholl admit to being a very demanding client!) on the interior design front was Keith Spillane and the likes of MMOS Engineering were vital to knitting old and new uses and services together, while Q Fab were onboard for the stainless steel lab work in what is now a hard-working, repurposed building.
Reversing Lotamore Houses fortunes was, clearly, a labour of love for John and Susan Waterstone, who now are in full operation mode at Lotamore, whose labs also serve the businesss other smaller clinics in Limerick, Waterford and Dublin.
And, while the houses fabric is fully secured, future phases will see the grounds (currently full of young rabbits, as if such symbols of fertility were needed) also taken back to suitable grandeur.
All the essentials are here though, from walled gardens to specimen hardwood trees and spectacular, blazes of in-flower rhododendron, visible from even across the Lee around Blackrock.
On the Irish Examiners visit and tour, the couples commitment and interest down to the minutiae of historic buildings is evident, in every square inch, of patinated old and shiny new.
John Waterstone even designed some of the furniture, such as the single, 18 long dining table in the staff canteen made out of 2 thick pitch-pine floorboards (egalitarian as well as aesthetic, and necessary as staff numbers jumped 30% with the move to Lotamore.)
They commissioned a lengthy history and biography of the 1798-built Lotamore House, linking it to the likes of far grander Lota House itself a few hundred metres along this shouldering, sunny, south-facing Cork valley hill.
S the older sibling, Lota House itself currently houses the Brothers of Charity, and was designed by Davis Duckart for a Robert Rogers, whose family built and leased out the seven-bay Lotamore House to a succession for Cork merchant prince families. Surnames include Harrison, Hackett, Perrier, Mahony, Lunham (of bacon fame), and from the 1920s, the fruiterer family the Cudmores as last private occupants.
Lotamore Houses own architects arent recorded, but in the way of coincidences, the related Lota Houses architect Davis Duckart also designed Corks elegant Mansion House, which is now the main point of entry to the citys Mercy Hospital.
In another unrelated hospital link, Lotamore House was the HQ of the Hospitals Trust/Irish Hospitals Sweepstakes after 1961.
Now again in a new eras medical usage, Lotamore Houses current owners have documented every stage of the physical transition too for future generations to peruse, moving from blueprints and working documents to decorative flourishes and plasterwork conservation, via photography and video.
Initially, an independent TV production company, GoodLookingFilms, started documenting Lotamore Houses transition to reproductive technology/fertility clinic, but in the end RT didnt commission the series which was going to mix embryo technology and micro, medical manouvres with a smattering of Grand Designs with About the House and Room to Improve.
It seems quite the lost opportunity: some of the couples and families that featured in early filming now have one and two-year-old children, as a coda to what would have been TV (and, far more importantly, personal) golden moments.
: New life.
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Lotamore House has been saved from decay and dilapidation - Irish Examiner