Room to roam for the price of city flat

YOU see why Cork is the biggest country in Ireland when you wend your way to Killasseragh.

Where? Killasseragh lies amid the plains and rich, rolling tillage lands of East Cork, where the views are so sweeping you suspect half of the land has not been settled or occupied.

The sense that there is land to spare is not accurate: farms sizes are huge, and the hinterland is discretely prosperous and best known to the horse and hunting set.

Killasseragh is near Ballynoe, in that vast, but rarely travelled, web of country roads and forestry between Midleton and Fermoy, with views towards Tallow, on the Waterford border, and the Knockmealdown mountains as a backdrop.

The generosity of space applies to this extended cottage holding, which is selling for 270,000: for the price of a city or suburban apartment, a buyer will get a renovated home with three bedrooms, character, four-and-a-half acres of land, and two complexes of stone-built out-buildings ideal for storage, horses, farm animals, or conversion to another living space.

The house is located two miles from Ballynoe village, three miles from Dungourney, eight miles from Midleton, and nine miles from Fermoy - and 27 miles from Cork city.

The house is for sale via Jervis Ottman, of Dominic Daly and Co auctioneers, who knows this countryside well. The house been re-roofed with tiles and refitted with PVC windows. It has oil central heating with a Cleopatra-brand oil cooker in the hip-ceilinged, quaint, country-style kitchen.

The house has out-buildings either side, and, over the last nine years, the vendors have upgraded it internally and externally (the house was sold by the monks at Mellery, to whom it was left).

The main entrance yard is sheltered, thanks to its courtyard-like embrace of the lofted outbuildings, with a rose bower and clematis scrambling over the old, stone sheds and archways.

Entry from this nicely planted area to the house is via a simply made sun-room, with low, stone walls, single-glazed windows in wood frames, and a corrugated plastic roof - you could try this country conservatory at home.

The homely kitchen has a tiled floor, high ceilings, and a small pantry, and opens in the other direction to a hall with an old staircase. Beyond this is a living room measuring 17’ by 15’, with thick, stone walls, low windows, a low ceiling and an open fireplace.

Beyond again, by the gable end, is a bedroom or study, with a connecting bathroom.

Overhead are three bedrooms, quaintly ‘old world’: one of these is created out a corridor space under the sloping roof, and has a shared en suite bathroom.

The other ‘front’ of the house has a pretty porch entrance, with stained-glass features to the hall, and looks across a yard to a long selection of low, stone sheds with slate roofs.

The house, buildings, and yards occupy less than an acre of the overall property, and the balance of the 4.5 acres is a paddock, handy for horses to graze, which slopes away from the house towards a small stream at its boundary. Killasseragh is ready for occupation, and a new owner can do as much or as little renovation as their hearts and wallets permit. The out-buildings provide scope for working from home, or for running a business.

At a price of €270,000, the Killasseragh property is better value than a city apartment, which would only have a balcony for outdoor space, but might cost as much. The same is true of a house on an estate. So, for anyone who doesn’t need to be working in the city five days a week, Killaseragh is ideal.