Chance to build on a French connection in Kinsale

Tommy Barker discovers a little piece of France in the middle of Kinsale.

“MY parents were doing Novenas for us,” says Fiona Russell, recalling peoples’ surprise at the scale of work needed when they bravely tackled The Beacon, a slice of old Kinsale with roots going back 400 years or more.

It was the solitary vision of a perhaps-idiosyncratic Frenchman, Bruno Guillou, who had understandably run out of steam in the re-build of this corner-sited beauty after more than a decade wedded to its sundry stone bricks and mortar.

He got it to the external shell stage with some swagger, yet by the time he got to sell it on there wasn’t a finished internal room on any of its five twisting and turning levels, though the ground floor had started to function as a restaurant.

The second phase of graft and grace came gratis of buyers Tom Walsh and Fiona Russell, who bought it in a flurry of romance, and who managed the difficult task of finishing out another person’s project and vision, with input from builder and friend Pat Hegarty.

While they very much kept the flavour French, they did it with their own sense of style: raising the bar on what had been a challenging but successful act of construction.

What had been a Hobbit-like house when they bought it, with lots of old stone, brick, timber and salvage, has been softened, probably feminised (Fiona has a women’s fashion shop Nouvelle only a few doors away on Main Street), and well, is now more Habitat in sheer style than Hobbit.

Habitable from top to bottom, and fitted with furniture from France and from Tom’s furniture business, Japara, it’s a home of immense Gallic charm, with an international flavour transposed to Ireland’s self-billed gourmet capital.

The Beacon revolves around a central spiral staircase and turrets/ tower, which owes its origins to its beacon status in centuries past.

The couple, now vendors with other renovation irons in the fire, put a residential stamp and status on the place, making sense of a labyrinth of undetermined spaces, deciding what rooms would be used for and how they’d look.

The pictures here tell the success of their input better than thousands of words could, and for those tempted, the good news is that it’s even better in reality.

The style make-over includes heating options, with oil-heated rads, old cast iron stoves, new Godin cast iron stoves, open fireplaces and a great kitchen oven range, a solid French affair by Lacanche. There’s a definite air of Provence in the decor and the bathroom, with vintage sanitary ware from France, wallpapers by Laura Ashley, paints by Farrow and Ball with paint effects on floors by local Kinsale artist Jane Skovgaard.

The finished house, great for parties, entertaining or just chilling out in the midst of a bustling town, has three entirely individual bedrooms. One cosy room has a neat en suite bathroom, another has a large walk- in wardrobe, feature beams and a sturdy antique door from Lyon, and the main one at the top of the house has magnificent vaulted ceilings, views, terrace access and Parisian panache.

Apart from the en suite, the main bathroom is another knock-out room, heavy and heady on the Provencal theme.

There’s a kitchen/ dining space with hand-built units integrating carved and painted wood panels, a 450 sq ft living room with dual aspect, double stoves, sash windows and exposed stone walls, a study in the building’s curved end, a private bar with zinc-topped bar counter, a laundry, and two external balconies/terraces, with not an ugly square foot in the entire 3,500 sq ft mix.

Sheehy Brothers are the selling agents again this time around, guiding €1.7 million for the mix of ground floor commercial space (80’ of street frontage, which can be separated into two or three quirky sections), and the overhead living quarters, a combined 3,500 sq ft right in the heart of Kinsale town and within a stone’s throw of the new and highly successful Fishy Fishy restaurant.

Pam Norris of Sheehy auctioneers feels it may be bought by a buyer from anywhere in Ireland, or the UK, as Kinsale gets a lot of entrepreneurial re-locators, and should a buyer come from La Belle France, well, they’ll feel instantly at home here. Bon chance.