Space for the horses

ESTATE Agent John Gaffney is turning his back on this million euro house sale - but only for a few weeks.

He is likely to remember the July 30 launch date for this big family home on the old Mallow road near Cork - it was his wedding day.

The GVM auctioneer’s final pre-wedding plans included preparing the sales brochure for Dun Ard, a significant spot on seven acres. However, the first couple of weeks of viewings will be a touch of Hamlet without the prince - he and his new bride Barbara McCarthy are spending some of their honeymoon in Gaffney, South Carolina, a town founded by one of John’s ancestors, a Michael Gaffney, back in 1803.

Taking up the reins of early viewings on Dun Ard will be John’s GVM colleague, auctioneer Valerie Quirke, whose multi-skills also stretch to acting as wedding car chauffeur today.

GVM guide Dun Ard at €1 million-plus and reckon the interest will be considerable because of its attributes - lots of space, on enough land to keep four or five horses, with scope for a house site or two, all within an eight-mile drive of Cork city.

Back in the 1990s, motorists would have cursed the slow drive to this place, as the old Mallow road was notorious for traffic snarls and bad bends: now, with the new Mallow road taking up the pace, it has been turned into a leafy and leisurely country drive.

The address is Kilmona, Grenagh, and the vendor of this large, five-year-old family home is in the plant/construction business, which helps explain the amount of graft gone into creating sweeping drives and site landscaping.

The two-storey house has five bedrooms, with two en suites and good living space that includes a 20’ by 12’ living room with whopping (well, 25’ by 14’) conservatory off, a 28’ by 17’ dining room, kitchen with oil-fired range, utility room and galleried hall and landing. The feeling of space is added to by extra-high ceilings. There’s also a garage with about 1,200 sq ft of space and scope for a home office in the upper section and beyond some rapidly-grown hedging is a large workshop shed or stables.

John Gaffney says there’s good pasture and a parkland setting for those who want a large home in the country with room for ponies or horses.

And, for those doting parents of horse-mad offspring, there’s scope to really spoil the young ‘uns - there’s about 300’ of road frontage, so there’s potential for a house site for the next generation.