Craft workers’ pride

Tommy Barker surveys a ready-to-go haven for new occupants.

ONCE a year, the lady of the house that is Mount Juliet, would leave what is still one of the country's greatest estates in her Rolls Royce, depart via Mount Juliet's Killarney Gates, and be driven for the traditional December 8 shopping day out, passing this farmhouse in the process.

The McCalmont family, most notably Major Donal McCalmont and his wife Bunny, owned Mount Juliet from 1914 to the late 1980s a long stretch of time, during most of which this farmhouse/cottage spent going into gradual decline.

Known as Killarney Farmhouse, after Mount Juliet's Killarney Gates, this wee home was built in the early 1800s, and by the early to mid 1900s was showing its age.

Although shared by two families in the latter half of the 1900s, it also had its roof caving in, and the process of decay was only arrested in 1998 when Kevin Toner and Tania Slaughter took it in hand, shook it by the scruff of its neck, and brought it all back to rights, sweetness, colour and light.

Kevin, a former jockey, and Tania, run Toners Bag Company, and having applied the 'stitch in time' remedy to Killarney Farmhouse are moving to a larger project with seven acres of land for their horses, donkeys, dogs, ducks, cat and cockerel.

And, at their new purchase, they are faced with a bit of an dilemma: the larger granite-built farmhouse they've bought to do up has replacement PVC windows.

Taking them out now that they are in and working isn't very 'green', but aesthetically they are an eyesore. The compromise they'll go for is to maybe try and sell them (the Local Trader paper is their Bible) or else keep them and fashion them into a greenhouse for the gardens.

No such compromises arose when doing up Killarney Farmhouse: everything needed doing and the work started literally with the walls and worked in and up from there.

The couple did a short course in using lime plaster and colours in Larch Hill in Kildare, and they drafted in the best of traditional local craftsmen for the masonry and woodwork.

Then, they also used another generation of craft workers, Kilkenny's thriving arts and craft community, for much of the decoration and furnishings, and scoured auctions, second-hand shops and salvage yards for appropriate materials for a totally traditional yet individual feel.

The finished house featured in House and Home magazine two years ago, and at the time you could look but not touch. Now that it is for sale you can touch, feel and buy the whole package.

That package, wrapped up in a €375,000 price guide by Kilkenny estate agent David FitzGerald, includes three bed fully renovated farmhouse, a one / two-bed converted stone barn, workshop /store and three stables, all on an acre of grounds.

Location is utterly rural, the nearest other dwelling is 300 yards away, the River Nore is three fields removed and Mount Juliet's Killarney Gates are 500 yards distant.

Given that top houses in the grounds of Mount Juliet and along the golf course sell for hundreds of thousands and even millions of euro, the price tag seems modest enough, even if the house is on the compact side. Add in the extra property elements such as courtyard barn and workshops, though, and it mounts up to an attractive residential option with the chance to run a business from the place as well subject to planning.

Location is between Bennettsbridge and Thomastown, eight miles from Kilkenny city, and amenities include golf, racing, fishing and hunting ....or just walking.

An Aga holds heating sway in the kitchen, heating water, rads and doing the cooking, and an interesting touch is the way they placed a large cast iron radiator beside the cast iron roll top bath in the bathroom for extra soaking comfort and warmth.

The first floor bedroom, with painted floor and pine panel ceiling, has an open fireplace with ornamental heavy basket and grate, and the fire opening is topped with a limestone lintel.

Limewash colours adorn the walls, with dyes mixed by the couple. "It's a very healthy house, the walls breathe naturally. My father used to keep cattle and whitewashed the cow stalls each year as a natural antiseptic," notes Northern Ireland-born Kevin.

In the cosy family area off the kitchen, a cast iron stove pumps out even more heat, and curiously it was an item they picked up second hand and later found out it had previously belonged to a friend and they had sat around in previous days and nights, providing a coincidental Circle of Friends link. Another solid fuel stove features in the sitting room, a pink-hued place with high ceilings and Velux for additional light, and this room has French doors to a graveled patio.The barn was the first building the couple worked on when they bought Killarney Farmhouse, and it too has lots of character. It comes with a ground floor kitchen, sitting room or optional bedroom, and overhead dining room with galley kitchen, shower and bedroom.

The workroom, used previously for the leather goods business which was on the Kilkenny Craft Trail, has 'bags' of space, some 1,200 sq ft, and has heating, cavity walks and insulation.

With a larger project, or at least larger property beckoning for the couple, Killarney Farmhouse is a ready-to-go haven for new occupants......once Kevin and Tania buckle down and pack their bags.