Hold your horses for Grove House’s six acres

THERE’S a lot on offer at Grove House — especially if you compare this Kanturk, Co Cork, offering with anything else available near a major Irish city in the same sort of bracket.

The price for this period dwelling, on six rural acres with horse facilities and more, is €500,000 via agents Hamilton Osborne King.

Given that Kanturk has been selected as a decentralisation base for 100 OPW jobs (though don’t hold your breath for them), it’s interesting to note that there are slim pickings for Dublin house sales on their website (www.hok.ie) at this sort of sum: think of a two-bed terraced house in Phibsboro, or a three-bed semi in Santry at this €500,000 level.

The Kanturk country cousin, by comparison, has room to breathe and breed horses, with horse walking equipment (no, not legs, something a bit more mechanical) and a setting a short trot from Kanturk along the Buttevant road.

The stone-faced house dates to 1860 and has been worked on only recently, with a homely feel, exemplified by the kitchen’s Aga oven and exposed beams.

It is adaptable and comes with one ground floor bedroom and two first floor bedrooms plus a first floor galleried sitting room.

Other rooms include a lounge with windows on three sides and a kitchen with exposed stone wall, Aga, Belfast sink, old pine units, utility and shower room.

Overhead, the sitting/living room is gallery style, fringed with wrought iron railings and with a maple floor, Veluxes and exposed beams.

The main bedroom has an en suite with period sanitary ware and several rooms have old cast iron radiators, fired by oil central heating.

To the back, there’s almost an American ranch feel to the sweeping courtyard which has five stables and a tack room.

Alongside the stable is a workspace or possible granny flat, described as a ‘saloon’ by the sales brochure but more likely to be a salon: it has previously been used for a hairdressing venture.

Behind this again, there’s a recently-built corrugated steel shed used for storage and equestrian functions, and there’s an all-weather equestrian walking ring where you can hold your horses while you wait for the OPW gang to gallop into town.