Corkbeg House

Corkbeg House was a historic house built on the island of Corkbeg in Cork Harbour. It was demolished to facilitate the creation of the Whitegate oil refinery.

Corkbeg House
General information
Location	Corkbeg, Midleton, County Cork Ireland
Coordinates	51°49′38″N 8°14′58″W / 51.82723°N 8.24951°W / 51.82723; -8.24951

House

The land where Corkbeg House was built originally belonged to the Condons. The remains of the castle they built in 1369 lie near the location of the house. The area of Corkbeg was tied very closely to the Fitzgeralds who been there since John FitzEdmond de Gerald purchased it from the William Condon in 1591.

The original house on the site was built before 1786. Robert Uniacke Fitzgerald built a new mansion house to replace his older one in the 1820s. The house itself was a three-bay, two-storey square house with a ‘very impressive central top-lit staircase hall’.^[1][2][3][4]

The Fitzgerald family sold it, after Robert Uniacke-Penrose-Fitzgerald died in 1919, though Lady Fitzgerald was still living in the house in 1921. It was turned into a fifty-roomed luxury hotel. The hotel was run by Major Patrick William Coghlan and Molly Colan. They sold the house and island in 1955. Molly died in the November 1957 Aquila Airways Solent crash in the Isle of Wight.

The whole site was cleared to allow the building of an oil refinery at Whitegate.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]}

The hotel advertising claimed:

Corkbeg Island Hotel, bracing sea-bound golf links, semi-tropical gardens, fires in bedrooms, no extra charge, all-electric, first-class cuisine
Ireland’s Riviera, all-in holiday resort boating, bathing, tennis, riding, fishing, dances every Wednesday and Sunday

See also

• List of historic houses in the Republic of Ireland

References

1. Hamilton, C.C. (1832). Leigh's New Pocket Road-book of Ireland ...: Containing an Account of All the Direct and Cross Roads, Together with a Description of Every Remarkable Place ... M.A. Leigh. p. 91. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
2. Windele, J. (1839). Historical and descriptive notices of the City of Cork and its vicinity, etc. p. 166. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
3. Hogan, Edmund, 1831-1917 (23 October 2016). "The description of Ireland : and the state thereof as it is at this present in anno 1598". Internet Archive. Retrieved 17 January 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
4. "NEW CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS, CORKBEG" (PDF). Irish Builder, Vol. XXIII, 1881, p.142.
5. "Postal Directory County Cork" (PDF).
6. "Estate Record: Fitzgerald/Penrose Fitzgerald (Corkbeg)". landedestates.nuigalway.ie. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
7. "CORKBEG, a parish". Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837). Retrieved 17 January 2020.
8. MacCarthy, Dan (13 October 2019). "Islands of Ireland: 'Tanks' for the memories Corkbeg". Irish Examiner. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
9. McCarthy, K. (2019). The Little Book of Cork Harbour. History Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-7509-8960-2. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
10. Lewis, S. (1840). A topographical dictionary of Ireland: comprising the several counties, cities, boroughs corporate, market, and post towns, parishes and villages ... : With an appendix describing the electoral boundaries of the several boroughs as defined by the act of the 2d. and 3d. of William IV. A topographical dictionary of Ireland. Lewis. Retrieved 17 January 2020.
11. "Whitegate Independent Power Plant Environmental Impact Statement" (PDF).
12. "Brook Short Solent air disaster". Memorials and Monuments on the Isle of Wight. 12 October 2008. Retrieved 17 January 2020.