Riverside estate is steeped in history

While a 1990s new-build has replaced the original dwelling by the Lee, Kitsborough has lost none of its charm, writes Tommy Barker

RARITY. It’s often claimed by estate agents as a selling point, but rarity means rare. Kitsborough has it, though, rarin’ to go.

What are the chances of getting a riverside estate with wooded walks and wild fauna, a fine modern house doffing its cap to earlier designs, a converted coachhouse in two mews, a walled orchard and tennis court, on 70 acres of land, all within a walk of a city?

In Kitsborough’s case, this Cork estate spent from 1785 until 1902 in the same Waggett family’s lineage and ownership. That’s quite a wait for a chance to buy.

Trailing Cork history, colourful anecdotes and incidents, Kitsborough is three miles upriver of Cork city, facing the Lee Fields and Carrigrohane Castle on the Lee Road at Leemount, Carrigrohane.

The original Queen Anne house design is associated with architect Davis Duckart, suggests owner Mary O’Leary, who did a MA thesis on the house’s history.

She had moved to Kitsborough with her late husband, Sean O’Leary, who was a one-time lord mayor of Cork (1972), a senator, Fine Gael strategist in the party’s Garret FitzGerald hey-day, and who was also a judge in the Circuit Court and High Court.

The O’Learys, with five children, bought Kitsborough in 1990, at which point 200 years of passing time and weathering elements, as well as basement flooding, had effectively signalled the main house’s death knell. With wet and dry rot, and decades of neglect, its time was up, so the walls came down. An estimate of £500,000 to restore the shell alone was enough to warrant replacement.

With it went a row of tumble-down one-room cottages on the avenue, but the old coachhouse was saved. This has been made over into two characterful self-contained mews buildings dating to the 1780s. Also saved were estate walls, the walled orchard now also sheltering a grass tennis court, the approach avenue and entrance pillars, and the mill pond which once powered a steel works near the estate.

Today’s Kitsborough home is set marginally back from the old house’s footprint. Its basement has been filled in with stone and rotted timbers from the Queen Anne original, now marked by a sundial on the beech-hedged lawn.

Cut limestone was kept, however, for things like hearth and doorsteps, garden seats, troughs, etc. A cast iron bath used by late Cork bishop Cornelius Lucey is back in pride of place upstairs in the ‘new’ build. The original house’s carved 1785 date-stone has also been replaced in the walled area known as Riordan’s Wood.

Apart from the six generations of descendants of original builder Christopher Waggett, other names associated with Kitsborough were the Riordans — related to Bishop Cornelius Lucey — the Ross family, and the Wood family. Of the latter clan who lived here for 31 years, Richard Wood began the John A Wood building empire from here.

Now, with their family grown, clan O’Leary are moving on. Charged with the sale is estate agent Sheila O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald’s Cork office, who has known the current occupants for years — and whose own extended O’Flynn family were responsible for the solid build quality seen here at the new Kitsborough.

Georgian in style, but not slavishly so, this six-bed, 4,000 sq ft home speaks of family comfort without a hint of ostentation. It has high ceilings and big rooms, all lived in and used, enjoyed for parties. Hospitable, yet in mint order throughout.

In almost anyone else’s book or brochure, the house descriptions could go on and on; suffice to say, it is as good as a buyer could hope for. It surveys woodland, water and walkways. Quality touches inside include parquet joinery at ground floor level, carpeted-over-concrete floors on the next level and rooms that include a formal dining room off the 23’ by 15’ kitchen and family hearth. There’s also a spacious sitting room, laid-back family room, study, large main hall and a back hall with boot room and cloaks. It has a guest loo, a main family bathroom with original bath, and three en-suite bedrooms out of a tally of six.

Built back from flooding levels (the lower grounds do flood when the ESB releases large volumes of water at Inniscarra Dam, but the house itself was unaffected by the valley’s dam-related floods in November 2009).

Kitsborough today continues to work its charm, and tempts with daily walks around fields crying out for children, horses, dogs and dens. ‘Tis the land, the location, the river. ‘Tis Cork, in a long-lens snapshot.