Go with the grain

SERENITY beckons at the Grain Store on Ringarogy.

Going with the grain is easy here. This is an island hideaway with a subtle difference; it is easy to get to and a wrench to leave.

A causeway with an almost roller-coaster of a humpback bridge links the island to the mainland just on the Skibbereen side of Baltimore amid some of coastal west Cork’s most pleasing scenery.

This is where the Ilen River meets the sea, with Carbery’s 100 isles just waiting to be explored forms a boater’s paradise.

Dating to the early 1800s, this rescued, converted and restored stone building was placed at the water’s edge for easy shipping and conveyancing of grain.

After a century of decline, the sorry stone ruins were brought back to life in the last decade, when its purchasers, a couple of UK medical specialists and widely-published authors, drafted in up to 200 tradespeople to effect a remarkable transformation.

With architect Tony Cohu on board, and with the active support of planner Patricia Power, and using slate, stone, timber, steel and glass, they created a place on a par with the best of international homes.

The house has stunning sun rooms with laser-controlled lights, geothermal-sourced under-floor heating and is IT future-proofed with 10 incoming phone lines and 90 switchable sockets for phone, internet and TV. Yet, it hasn’t lost its firm west Cork foundations and flavour.

There’s no getting away from the setting, and it was this which the current owners in.

“I think we looked at a couple of hundred houses in west Cork, but when we saw this we knew we’d found our home,” says the vendor.

Nothing was stinted on or spared. Space is abundant, with a 7,000 sq ft property (main residence plus triple car/boat garage and overhead stores) on a well-judged private five acres. Old elms, now a rarity, line the half mile of private drive to this water’s edge residence.

There’s a quarter mile of river frontage, and the grain store has been buttressed from the tides by a massed concrete fringing jetty, which has a small pontoon to its lee-side.

While Cork city, airport and ferries are a 90-minute drive or less, boating is the way to get to and fro for leisure. Craft on their way to Oldcourt boatyard are a constant feature, and on the Irish Examiner’s visit this week, a seal popped his head up right on cue to vouch for the area’s wildlife credentials.

Internally, the house is ranged over two sides of a glazed-roof atrium. It has five bedrooms, each with top-notch en suites, while the master suite has a bathroom which leaves hotel penthouses in the league of the great unwashed.

Living quarters ranged off the galleried hall include study, sitting room, a light-drenched 30 x 18ft drawing room with glass on three sides, a media room, formal dining room, a kitchen with family area to one side and a conservatory off.

Sadly, everything has a price, and the Grain Store comes to market at €3 million, with joint selling agents Hamilton Osborne King, Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill, and Knight Frank in the UK.