The best of everything in farmhouse-style living

Rose Martin says Iona has three separate gardens in triangle with the stream running through the middle.

THERE’S a Scottish flavour to this house at Tisaxon More in Kinsale, and it’s not just the name, Iona, but it can be picked up in the tartan carpet and baronial dining suite. And Iona is a bit of a tranquil island, set as it is on an acre of ground with a babbling brook and big old trees.

In fact, it has three, separate gardens in a sort of triangle with the stream running through the middle and providing the perfect setting for a riverside deck with footbridge. This is placed on the south-western end of the site and has the sun until setting time.

The house is farmhouse-style in design and was conceived and built by the vendors. The location is just north of the historic town and it’s a relatively new build with plenty of space and a run of living rooms

There’s a lovely curved gallery over the entrance porchway, (the front view is the back, with the main door around a gravel sweep), and acts as a light well for the hallway below.

Iona combines a number of features: it has 3,300 square feet for starters, and that includes a self-contained apartment on the ground floor. This is ideal for visitors or long-stay relatives as it comes with a living room with fireplace, a cute little kitchen behind a pair of double doors, two single beds in the bedroom and an en suite bathroom. All of this off the main corridor with its own hallway and entrance door, as well as French doors on to the garden.

This lies to the right of the entrance hallway and to the left is the formal, living and dining room which runs across the south-facing side of the houses. Next door is another living room, used as a playroom, which opens directly off the large, kitchen area.

Decorated in soft, Farrow and Ball colours and with a cream kitchen, this is a good circulation space with an island/breakfast bar in the centre and an informal dining area set into a large, bay/sunroom at the garden end of the room. It’s a bright, warm room and it opens on to the hallway at one end and to a side lobby and utility at the other, giving access to the patio and entrance driveway.

The stairwell is set on the right hand side of the house and climbs to the curved landing, with a feature, curved wall behind.

Here, there are four bedrooms with the master suite taking up the width of the house at the southwestern end. This combines a dressing room and en suite bathroom with simple but attractive, mosaic tiling and his and hers basins. The main bathroom comes with similar styling and a Jacuzzi.

There’s an attractively decorated child’s bedroom with en suite and a third, guest bedroom. The fourth room is used as an office and the house comes with broadband, a strong selling point in a country with patchy roll-out. The guide price for Iona is in the region of €945,000 through joint agents Pacelli Nolan of SWS Property Services, Kinsale and Andy Moore of Andrew Moore and Co, Cork.