Strand House a must sea for those seeking genteel living
GLOBAL warming fears indicate rising tides and the sea reaching places it hasn’t before.
Well, West Cork’s Strand House has seen the sea rise and fall, ebb and flow, before.
When built back in the 1760s, the sea did indeed come close to its boundaries. However, reclamation in the mid 1800s saw three causeways built which made access along coastal inlets by Inchydoney and Dunmore easier, and had the effect of pushing back the sea. It was carried out by the Lords Shannon and Carbery (who got £15,000 a year in rents,) who paid a small army of workers 6d per head per year as a relief scheme.
Now, Strand House and its 1.5 acres is alongside eco-sensitive reclaimed marsh areas controlled by Duchas, and grazed by horses, and is probably in as rude health today as it was when first built, thanks to the ministrations of its owners, a family with mixed Swiss, UK and German backgrounds. These three generations (grandmother, adults and offspring) are in occupation for almost a decade, and all have a propensity to plant and garden.
Two miles from Clonakilty, Strand House has a real woodland and glade feel, all dappled light at this time of year, with sensitive planting. There are garden paths and mown walkways through a grove of alder, ash, sycamore and willow, as well as palms, ferns, fruit trees, flowering plants, bluebells and daffs now passing their prime, there’s a pond with abundant frog-life, irises and gunneras, viburnum, wisteria, pear trees and primroses ... something for everyone, and for every season. Spring is best and the bird morning chorus only magnificent, reckons the owner who gardens here daily, with her mother whose pride and passion are the flower, herb and vegetable beds, and box hedging.
The family are uprooting to another, well-advanced seaside project the other side of Clonakilty and Strand House is a ready to move into proposition for any new occupants, says Martin Kelleher of SWS Property Services in prosperous Clon.
He seeks €975,000 for the period property, an early Georgian home of almost-modest proportions, four bedroomed, and with a converted stable block across a graveled courtyard, now a comfortable one-bedroomed granny flat with solid fuel stove for toasty comfort.
The main house has a virtually identical footprint or floor plan at ground and first floor levels, with a central hall used as a dining room and with direct garden access, while overhead this similar space houses a small snooker table.
Walls are super-thick, giving deeps widow opes, many with stripped pine shutters to the side, and the first floor door architraves really show their ancient origins. People were small then, as anyone over five foot and an inch or two in height will have to duck. During renovations, the ceiling levels were raised up towards the apex of the roof, so the main bedrooms upstairs now have exposed heavy beams and great height (once successfully through the low doors) and the master bedroom currently houses a lofty four-poster bed.
Most of the characterful rooms have a double aspect, thanks to lots of gable wall openings, the kitchen overlooks the courtyard, with its windows prettily framed with climbing plants, the sill housing a Belfast sink is ringed in deep granite, and heat and cooking comes from a dark-blue Aga, oil-fuelled.
Both main reception rooms are painted a dark green, have open fireplaces and a cosy, evening retreat attraction.
One of the four bedrooms is at ground level, there’s a good main bathroom and an en suite bathroom, while the guest cottage also has a small loo. It just needs a kitchenette to be self-sufficient/
Alongside this old stone stables conversion is a garden shed, and the vendors are just finishing off a lofted garage building by the entrance gates, discretely tucked away behind a gap in the mature hedging. Privacy levels are high in any case, given the e quiet back-water nature of the country lane it is situated off.
Stranded by the receded tides and reclamation, Strand House is one of Clonakilty’s older intact period housing stock, finely kept and presented. The gardens and grounds it is on give it a good run for its money in terms of appeal. It holds the promise of genteel living, period-lite style, small enough to be easily kept but large enough to hold big furniture, family and guests in some comfort and style.
