Eatery and home in one, Casino House is safe bet
IF you are looking for a special place to call home, how about an Irish period house that comes garlanded with tasty awards?
Casino House, near beaches at Coolmain harbour and Kilbrittain, is a gentle, and even affluent part of west Cork, in a triangle between Kinsale, Bandon and Clonakilty.
And, for the last few years, it has been working hard for its living.
The family home of Michael and Kerrin Relja, and their four daughters, it has also been a top restaurant for most of the year, without losing a quality, homely feel.
It won ‘best restaurant in Ireland’ in 2005, was a consistent Bridgestone-recommended diner (from 2003 to 2009) and got a Michelin ‘bib gourmand’ accolade for best restaurant design, after it added on a new, contrasting, contemporary-style, glazed dining room extension a couple of years ago, overseen by Bandon architect, Una O’Sullivan.
Now, having been in business here since the mid-1990s, the family is looking to sell up, and move back to the Continent, with bright city lights beckoning once more for Croatian chef, Michael Relja. Dutch/German Frisian Islander Kerrin’s enthusiasm to uproot appears somewhat dimmer!
Renovating Casino House has been a labour of love for the duo, with bits done all the way along, but there were two evident big pushes, at the start, after 1995, when they bought it from private ownership, and again when two heavily-glazed extensions were added, one for diners, the other a private, upstairs dining room off a family kitchen.
Garden-rescuing proceeded all the way along, with four wonderful acres to play around with, including paddocks and a stable shed for two donkeys, meadows and an orchard, vegetable garden and glasshouse, and long, beech, chestnut and sycamore-shaded approach avenue leading up from the renovated sentinel cottage at the scenic roadside entrance just up from the beach.
Now, as Casino House (the name comes from casa, for small house — but it’s anything but small) comes up for sale, its appointed selling agent, Ron Kruger, of Engel and Volkers in Kinsale, reckons most buying interest will come for it as a private residence — but he’s leaving all options on the menu.
Turning it back to full-time private residence needs little more than removing the existing commercial kitchen and freeing up that room.
There’s 3,600 sq ft of space here, in the main dwelling alone (there’s some outbuildings, stores, etc, too), completed with a well-balanced mix of respect for tradition, and a bit of modernity blended in as well.
The look, for want of description, is loose-limbed Scandinavian, with soft-furnishing toppings and lots, and lots of art work. The paintings of Kinsale-based artist Katherine Boucher Beug (she’s just had a major show open in Dublin’s Oliver Sears Gallery on Molesworth Street) figure strongly here in their personal collection.
The Georgian seaside house is nearly 90-foot long: it gained extra length after Kerrin and Michael extended into attached stone stables, making for handy service/office rooms downstairs by the current entrance, and adding a couple of extra bedrooms overhead.
There’s now six bedrooms, and four reception rooms, and the best rooms in the original section of house have a double-aspect, with green garden views and some framed sea and beach views as well.
Outside, you can hear the waves crash on Coolmain beach, popular with kite-surfers, wind-surfers, and picnicking families. Even fin whales find this place near Courtmacsherry special, with a 50-foot example, who died on a beach here in 2009, now on display in nearby Kilbrittain.
Best viewing perch at Casino House is the cosy, upstairs living room, with high ceilings, open cast-iron fireplace, and a perfect winter evening’s retreat.
Most windows here have been upgraded, with new, timber-sash, double-glazed frames made by skilled joiner, Dan Calnan, but the Reljas also kept some of the older originals, just for authenticity’s sake, and shutters help add an insulating layer on colder days.
Floors in the main portion are a mix of polished terracotta tiles and timber, and, apart from the main central heating, extra characterful warmth comes from two solid-fuel stoves, a grey, highly-efficient Scan stove upstairs in the family’s private dining area with IKEA units, and a far larger, brown Charnwood stove in the relaxing seating space by the dining room.
Colours in lots of rooms are assertive Farrow and Ball shades, and finishes are soft and powdery, especially in the private upstairs rooms, where the 170-year-old house’s age is more evident and honoured.
Yet, Casino House is no museum or gallery, it’s a home and a business, and a garden, and a labour of love. The couple got planning permission for a nine-bedroom extension a year or so ago, thinking of adding to its accommodation tally for extra income, but have decided not to follow this route, and instead to re-invent themselves in Germany: their older twin girls will sit their Leaving Certificate here next year, though, as Michael ventures back first to remind city slickers of his culinary calibre.
The original Casino restaurant seating area had about 350 sq ft of space, now that’s been added to with a flat-roof, membrane-topped 450 sq ft sun room with access to the gravelled drive/terrace. The floor is limed oak, with underfloor heating, and the roof has been heavily-insulated, and is strong enough to serve as a balcony overhead. The membrane is a highly-regarded, ethylene polypropylene rubber called TPO, is considered environmentally friendly and can also be grassed over.
It all overlooks a small lawn and a ‘lover’s walk’ along Fuchsia-lined paths, and the beach is a five-minute walk away.
Behind the venerable, early Victorian house, there’s a more private garden, with glasshouse and herbs beds, with a strong visual line of a couple of dozen Hornbeam trees leading, literally, up the garden path, with a solitary eucalyptus tree in the orchard acting as an exclamation point.
With quince trees, lots of apple, pear, plum and more, and a bee-loud glade in here, it’s heaven.
Casino House’s drive is a circuit through the grounds, which took lots of clearing out and cutting back in 1995, and is used as a one-way system now.
Kerrin shows off an old, stone store building under rambling roses and by a stone-flagged sun-trap seating terrace, noting that they didn’t even know it existed when they bought Casino House from its last owners.
By the public road outside is the cutest of country cottages, a wee one-bed with kitchen/living room, shower/WC, and bedrooms, with limed pine-sheeted ceilings.
This cottage looks wholly authentic, but was rescued by Michael and Kerrin from total dereliction, and at the time the county council want it knocked to improve road safety.
Now, it’s a stand-out feature, thanks, in part, to an old black ‘high Nellie’ bike bolted to its whitewashed wall and window sill. Tourists stop all the time to photograph it, which might be awkward for occasional guests who rent it as a country love-nest.
Rambling Casino House is a drive out of Bandon, Courtmacsherry and Timoleague, on a well-travelled tourist route, within easy strike of both Kinsale and Clonakilty. A nearby farmhouse used to do horse-drawn, gypsy-style caravans years ago, probably in the 1970s, slowing traffic down to a plodding walk. Now, laden camper vans with Continental registration plates are the modern-day equivalents, only proceeding at a marginally faster trot.
Off the R600, the beguiling property mix is totally private and secluded, and will remain trading and impressing until the end of the summer.
Last orders, or fresh hands? Private, or business? What’s the betting now for Casino House itself?
