House of the week

WELCOME to the former turf of former top Irish amateur jockey (and official Turf Club inspector of Courses) Bill McLernon.

Rathcormac’s Church of Ireland Rectory is steeped and steepled in horses, in several ownerships through the latter half of the 1900s, right up to today. What’s the betting the next owners will be horse mad too?

Noted jockey Bill McLernon, reckoned to have been Ireland’s best point to point and amateur jockey in the 1950s and 1960s, owned this Co Cork period home and lands and kept horses here up to about 1980, and kept his hand and hoofs in the racing game (he’s now retired) right into the 2000s as the man who called the shots on course suitability and conditions.

The current owners, Bill and Marion Hornibrook, ran a riding school, BeechPark, from this quite idyllic beech tree-fringed base for decades, bringing the sons and daughters of the well off from around Ireland and England for residential courses, with the stable yard echoing to the clatter of metal shoes, and the house simultaneously being ransacked by horsing around teenagers.

Now, it’s all gone quiet. The Hornibrooks children have grown up and moved on, the riding school is finished — so it’s time, in the David Niven-recalled expression, to ‘bring on the empty horses’, and new riders too.

The Rectory, built to an almost standard Church Temporalities template is gracious, but not overly fie, and is relatively large for its parish: the 1901 census showed it had domestic staff of three.

Still well-kept, but without the gain of servants, Rathcormac’s rectory is two-storey over full basement, with its lower level (three bedrooms down here) not only fully self-contained, it is cut off from the main house’s interior as the lower stairs was removed in the past. It’s access point now is via an external stairs by the front lawn, which is level enough for tennis or croquet.

The main ground level has three reception rooms, plus kitchen with very large arched gable window by the sink, while the top floor is home to six bedrooms, all with fireplaces, plus main bathroom (there’s a bathroom on each of the three floors.)

The house has retained significant originality, with multi-paned sash windows and sashes, fireplaces, pine floors, fan-lit front door, etc.

Selling agent Catherine McAuliffe of Savills guides The Rectory on its lush green and private 5.8 acres at €800,000, noting its proximity to Cork city, and reckons its next owners will be attracted by that 20 minute zip to Cork, and the range of buildings on site catering for horses.

There’s a beech-lined approach drive past stone entrance pillars, gravel drive, sunny adjacent wall for herb growing, and then a yard with eight boxes, a fine, tall lofted coachhouse/feed house, practical hard-paved side yard, an overgrown but easily rescued sand arena, and then paddocks stretching in front and around to the side and rear of the residence.

A section of other adjoining lands have been hived off as serviced sites, without impinging on the private sanctuary of the Rectory — which in its day was connected to the parish’s church by a short walk through green fields.

Much of the Rectory’s perimeter planting ensuring its privacy dates back to the 1870s, and includes beech, oak, chestnut, ash, maple and rhododendron.

VERDICT: There’s freedom to roam, inside and out, at this commutable buy, so pony up.