Waterside Quay

Eleven-bay three-storey former iron works, c. 1875, building and site re-developed c. 1994, of original buildings only block to Hanover Street remains. Pitched roof. Red brick façade to Hanover Street in Flemish bond. Camber headed window openings with yellow brick dressings, windows having cills. Fixed multipane windows, each having a pair of pivoting panes. Steel corner projectors to arched entrance opening to courtyard, one incorporating cast iron figurine. Yellow brick to arched opening. Modern wrought iron gates leading to internal courtyard and block of apartments c. 1994. Elevation to courtyard having coursed random limestone façade with red brick dressings. Modern additions having a plain render finish. Camber headed openings and windows to original as the main façade, modern additions have square headed openings with uPVC windows, stairwell lit by a two storey round headed fixed modern window. Street frontage, site backs onto river.

The Hive Iron Works were an important iron works first established in Cork in 1800. The factory produced decorative and functional cast-iron work, including the gates to the Mardyke Walk, until its closure in 1935: the factory was then adapted as the Hanover Shoe Company. The furnaces were lost in the mid 1960s and many of the related buildings were lost in the 1980s when extensive demolition took place to enable the construction of an unemployment exchange. The surviving buildings were incorporated into Waterside Quay (1994). This important relic of the industrial heritage of Cork, although modified, retains its form and some historic fabric.