Green, green grass of home

By Tommy Barker IT’S not everyone who gets to spend their days pushing up daisies, cosy under the sod in the land of the living.

And, when the sun shines at grass-roofed Solar House in Ballinskelligs in Kerry, you could be forgiven for thinking you had indeed died and gone to Heaven.

The house also a studio space for multi-talented artist Tim Booth and his partner Doris Knoeble, and is up there in the small and select band of truly unique Irish homes.

It has a curved grass roof in a middle section, strewn with wild meadow flowers and the odd interloping yellow-crowned ragworth.

It has the remains of a 150-year-old stone cottage at its heart, with the old stone walls in stark contrast with the modern architectural sweep of curves, glass inserts and angles. It also has a bank of solar panels in the ditch behind to back up the power supply to keep the seemingly vast, but compartmentalised 3,000 sq ft property ticking over.

Built initially 10 years ago by a Dubin couple as a holiday home, it was an adventurous architectural forray, mixing frivolity with practical function and innovation.

Doris, originally from Germany but more than acclimatised to Ireland after 34 years here, came across Solar House by accident, as she and Tim were on the point of buying another house in Cobh in Cork about four years ago.

She had answered an advertisement for furniture for the Victorian home they had their eye on. That Cobh sale hit more than a speed bump when it failed an engineer’s survey, and when she rang back about not buying the furniture the seller mentioned that she had this house for sale in Kerry.

It was a pure and random meeting of minds and circumstances. Tim and Doris fell for it instantly, but admit that many other people who had looked at this place - off the beaten track in more ways than one - couldn’t see what to do with it. Back then it had a small number of large open spaces, and the new owners set about making subtle changes to the dramatic open plan layout to make it more amenable to full-time living. They also put in mains electricity, as the solar powered battery system just couldn’t cope with reasonably normal domestic loads - the sudden power draw of putting on the kettle alone was enough to trip the system.

“We had a generator for a while. but it was like having a moped going all day in the garden,” Doris laughs.

They worked on the place, now known for its good-craic hospitality and parties, both inside and out. Outdoors, they worked the gardens, digging up loose stone, building dry stone walls, laying paths with Valentia slate, planting and landscaping so that the house sits easily in a profusion of colour, anchored to the landscape by its strip of grass roof (see also page 16)

The exterior is split into different roofed sections, with four distinct pitched and curved rooflines, and inside one section is given over to Tim’s working studio.

The studio, screened from the living room by huge sliding cherrywood doors, is open to the public (signs on the road down by Ballinskelligs village say when it is open or not) and where he also sells some friends’ work, both sculpture and paintings.

Originally from Kildare, Tim straddles different artistic media: he played guitar in the 1960s with the legendary band Dr Strangely Strange, who once had Elton John playing as their support act before the roles got reversed and only one of them got knighted. He worked as a film director and animator, and two years ago had a vaguely futuristic novel, Altergeist, published.

Although he paints part of the year in France, many of his paintings pick up on the scenic beauty of this Ring of Kerry setting, though he says he has only painted the iconic Skelligs once ever - too many other paintings of them out there, he reckons. Tim Booth’s paintings range from seemingly straight landscape to the subversive, and though his background is in abstract work his output now is largely figurative and observed with a draughtman’s eye and a romantic’s heart. Something to do with the setting, no doubt.

Solar House has more than an abstract romantic streak, and has even become known as a honeymoon retreat. A section of this now-compartmentalised house has been sectioned off so that it can be put to self-catering guest use, and it is popular with just-marrieds, lovers and those just looking to get away from ensuite bungalow B&B uniformity (check out www.solarlodge.net)

This lodge section has a triangular living space, a sideline Siematic kitchen, bathroom with stand-alone cast iron bath and shower with walls tiled with a cross-section of old colourful tiles, plus a guest bedroom, set within the stone walled original cottage and with the rough walls painted white.

The flip side of those stone walls, left exposed, is a feature in the main living room and a back-drop to an enormous solid fuel stove. This open-plan living/dining room (with Siematic kitchen units and black Aga) is an eye-boggling space with a mix of cutting beams, panoply of windows throwing shadows and a high, curved concrete ceiling like some ’60s church.

In this concrete ceiling, the imprint of the plywood used for the timber shuttering can be discerned, like some fossil outline.

There’s another church touch in this mini-cathedral room: the lofty doors and window shutters have been made from the backs of salvaged pitch pine church pews, filling 10’ high spaces with aplomb.

A smart idea, they have a literal downside: they are starting to sag, a sort of precipitous fall from grace. “In need of bracing renewal,” preaches Fr Tim.