Bridge naming prompts renewed calls to tackle derelict Vernon Mount House

The decision by Cork City Council to name its newest footbridge after a stately home allowed to fall to rack and ruin has been met with bemusement by one local representative.

At this week’s meeting of the city council, the decision was taken to name the pedestrian and cycle bridge over the N40 Vernon Mount Bridge after the adjacent derelict Vernon Mount site.

Despite calls in March of this year for the council to compulsorily purchase the Mount Vernon site, City Hall has not answered multiple questions from The Echo as to whether it has followed up on those entreaties.

Naming process 

Earlier this year, the local authority sought nominations for the naming of the new 4m wide bridge over the South Link Road, which, when opened, will provide a new pedestrian and cycle link to Tramore Valley Park.

Over a period of a month, a total of 598 nominations were received from the public through a naming submission process, and councillors eventually chose the Vernon Mount Bridge from a shortlist.

Following the decision by Cork City Council, the new bridge is named after Vernon Mount House, a neo-classical Georgian mansion built in the 1780s and overlooking what is now Cork’s South Ring Road.

Vernon Mount was one of Cork’s last surviving Georgian mansions and had contained significant murals by 18th-century artist Nathaniel Grogan.

Derelict house 

It had been in private ownership since the 1990s and had fallen into dereliction after an investment company was refused planning permission for a hotel and residential property development on the site.

Following years of anti-social behaviour, the building was badly damaged in a fire in 2016, three years after Cork County Council had used its powers under the 2000 Planning and Development Act and intervened to repair a leaking roof, at a cost of €170,000.

In 2019, following the city boundary extension, Vernon Mount came under the jurisdiction of Cork City Council.

Cork City Council was understood to have been attempting to contact the site’s owner after the Office of Public Works (OPW) said in late 2021 that it had no jurisdiction over the property.

Fine Gael councillor Shane O’Callaghan was among the councillors to this week voice support for the name Vernon Mount Bridge, “in recognition of Vernon Mount House’s unique, historical, and architectural place”.

Cllr O’Callaghan told The Echo in December 2021 that the council was seeking permission from the owner of Vernon Mount House to apply for a national heritage grant to fund the necessary repairs to the building, estimated in 2017 at over €43,000 at that time.

It is understood that the council had failed to contact the owner of the property, prompting calls earlier this year on the council to issue a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on the site.

In late 2021, Labour Party TD for Cork East, Seán Sherlock, was told by the then-public expenditure minister Michael McGrath that the lands surrounding the house were owned by a company which had dissolved, meaning “these lands may have devolved to the State”.

However, Mr McGrath said the house and its immediate curtilage was owned by a separate, live company with up-to-date annual returns and a normal Company Registration Office status.

“Therefore the house and its immediate curtilage is not vested in the minister for public expenditure and reform under the State Property Act 1954 and, that being the case, the OPW has no role in the matter.”

In March of this year, Mr McGrath’s successor as public expenditure minister, Paschal Donohoe, told Mr Sherlock that the “position regarding Vernon Mount House remains the same”.

At the time, Mr Sherlock’s Labour Party colleague, Douglas local area representative Peter Horgan, said it felt like a case of the OPW and Government passing the buck to the local authority, who in turn wanted to pass it back to the OPW.

“Regardless of the property being in public or private ownership, the property is in dereliction and is an unsafe structure and there needs to be an intervention made to secure the site and restore it, and whether that means that the owner then gets billed, or some mechanism is devised to recoup the public monies spent on such a move, that’s something that needs to be decided by the powers that be,” Mr Horgan said.

He said the situation could not be allowed to continue where derelict structures lay unaddressed for years on end, with seemingly no clear actions being taken to resolve them.

“In the case of Vernon Mount, quite simply I would say Cork City Council needs to CPO it,” he said.

Cllr Shane O’Callaghan agreed, saying in March that the time had come for Vernon Mount House to be taken into public ownership.

“If efforts to contact the owner have been unsuccessful, or the owner has been uncooperative, I think either way the time has come now for Vernon Mount House to be brought into public ownership by way of compulsory purchase order,” Cllr O’Callaghan said.

“In December 2020, I succeeded in getting Vernon Mount placed on the Derelict Sites Register, and that means that the owners of the property since December 2020 have been required to pay an annual levy of 7% of the market value of the property to the city council.

“To my knowledge that levy has not been paid, and I think that, given the fact that all of the efforts to engage with the owner have been unsuccessful, now is the time to start the process of bringing the property into public ownership,” he said.

Asked in March whether the owner of Vernon Mount has paid the dereliction levy, a spokesperson for Cork City Council said: 

“The payment of a levy by an individual and/or site owner is not something that Cork City Council discloses to the public as it is private information”.

Renewed calls for CPO

Following Monday’s decision by councillors to name the new bridge over the N40 the Vernon Mount Bridge, Peter Horgan said that Cork City Council should go a step further and action a CPO to take the damaged house into public ownership to attempt preservation and some partial restoration.

“Naming a bridge is one thing but owning the land that the house that bears its name would be a further signal of ownership for the lands involved,” he said.

“Vernon Mount House is spoken of in glowing terms but we still are nowhere with obtaining the land.

“State authorities are shrugging their shoulders as Vernon Mount continues to fall more and more asunder,” Mr Horgan said.

Multiple queries from The Echo to Cork City Council asking whether the council was looking at compulsorily purchasing Mount Vernon have gone unanswered.