At home and away in the best of the west

TALK of putting down roots: Denise and Padraig Cusack got so well burrowed down at Aughadown, West Cork, that despite being two miles inland and uphill of the sea from Kilcoe and Roaring Water Bay, they had to drill down 490 feet for their well supply.

The Cusacks’ smartly reworked homestead is in a sublime setting on three acres, set just enough inland to inspire thoughts about landscape in the widest sense. There’s a broad sweep of west Cork land, rock, dell-like pockets of green and blazes of gorse, and an azure blue swathe of sea beyond. The nearest house is half a mile away, so when you are home, you’re alone.

When Padraig (son of actor, writer and producer Cyril Cusack) and Denise first visited the area in 2001, this house at the Land of Lyre was in altogether rougher shape, with cattle and pig sheds in a raw state, and living quarters that were little more than were basic. It was full of plastic bags of possessions, hanging from ceiling rafters, like some early harbinger of the plastic bag levy.

“But we’d looked at worse, and when we asked for a survey, we were told it had been up for 100 or 150 years, and wasn’t going anywhere,” they say. The couple are uprooting to relocate nearby with daughters Megan and Kitty.

De-bagged, stripped out and extended from the house into the former sheds, it is all so different now, reflecting much changed times, more affluence, increased comfort, and the very best of country cottage chic. That it seems dry as a bone, thanks to extensive drains around the old stone walls, is a bonus too.

It hugely helped that the Cusacks had done several renovations before this one, including a 16th century abattoir in Britain, and their backgrounds in theatre and graphic design gave them the vision to do this naturalistic but stylised version of a 21st century west Cork farmhouse.

They had the input of local builder Tim Farley, who worked off a natural materials palette, so there’s exposed stone window and door heads, slate windowsills with a l boiled linseed oil finish, and rough plaster and sturdy wooden beams. There are even woven willow screens and, the real bright idea, a conservatory-like roof light in timber frame at the apex of the kitchen.

Yet it isn’t twee or too received; it takes the by-now familiar Irish farmhouse conversion/renovation job to new levels of finish.

Sarah Connolly of Charles P McCarthy auctioneers in nearby Skibbereen (10 minutes away from the house) guides this top-to-bottom quality job at €760,000, and is confident of getting this sum. The property has loads of good living space and four first floor bedrooms, one with a superb en suite with unusual Moroccan tadillac plaster finishes on the sink console and shower enclosure.

The L-shaped property has a short atmospheric lean-to link corridor which helps to tie in the different sections, as well as corridor turns with an unusual use of tall, roughly planed and stained timbers for a New England barn look, which contrasts with the soft-hued render.

Rooms include a family room/den off the super-bright and cheery 30’ x10’ kitchen, an atmospheric living room with solid fuel stove, a bookshelf-lined study, an office, quirky guest WC and cloakroom, main bathroom, four bedrooms (with the guest bedroom having separate garden access via an old set of gable steps).

The rapidly-matured gardens have great character thanks to old stone walls and mature trees, with a courtyard created between the main dwelling and a couple of old stone outbuildings.

In addition, there’s a couple of acres of paddock, space for that pony, donkey, bullocks, a few goats or, for the truly fleet of foot, a quad bike dirt track to link up with the rest of the world a mile or so down the almost deserted boreens.