House of the week

This four-bed home with stables, car port and around five acres of land is guided at €435,000.

PROPERTY consultant Stephen Jeffery has found Irish homes for the rich and famous — he helped Michael Flatley, Graham Norton and singer Morrissey find Munster houses. Now, he’s looking for a buyer for his own home.

Trained in the UK, Jeffery came to Ireland in the 1990s, just in time for the boom, and specialised in locating exclusive homes for time-pressed buyers. The late Michael Jackson gave him a call - but he didn’t take on the entertainer at the time.

In the downturn meantime, Jeffery has concentrated on rentals, and property management, and back in the early 2000s he went site-hunting for himself, his wife Fran, and for their pony and horse-mad family in west Cork.

They came across some lovely land, well-located, just two fields away from the sea near Kilbrittain and Courtmacsherry Bay, trading the lack of sea views for shelter for the land, the house he was to build, and for the pampered horses. Now that the family has flown the coup and horses are gone from the stables, the house is too big for just a couple, and he and Fran are moving, downsizing and going just a bit closer to Clonakilty where he has a small office. Selling agents — apart from the vendor himself — are Hodnett Forde in Clonakilty, and the four-bed home with stables, car port and around five acres of land are guided at €435,000, and has had eight viewings in week one already, with a buyer profile mostly from overseas/relocaters but with Irish roots or links. A surveyor by training, Jeffery designed and specified the house himself with an architect’s back-up for planning, and while planners wanted something traditional, it mixes farmhouse style in front with something a bit brighter, more open and expansive behind to the southern side, with larger windows and wraparound hardwood decking.

It was finished in 2004, and has two of its four bedrooms en suite, with one at ground level — so is a house for buyers of all ages. The painstakingly-detailed house at the Burren Kilbrittain includes an annex with overhead loft studio/home office space, used by Fran Jeffery for making high-quality soft home furnishings, and in the best of Irish farmhouse style, there’s external gable stairs access as well as internal access. It’s about a 30-minute drive from Cork airport, near Timoleague, Kilbrittain, Bandon and Clonakilty too, just off the coastal west Cork route from Kinsale to Clonakilty, with a school bus service to hand. Having been through hundreds of houses professionally, the couple astutely used the space available to them to good effect here, so instead of a scarcely used dining room, for example, the hall is big enough to accommodate a decent-sized dining party away from the kitchen, and this room/space includes a corner fireplace and double doors to the decking, with low wainscoting and uplighters.

The 18’ by 15’ sitting room has a triple aspect, and open fireplace, while the kitchen/breakfast room has a Royal Blue Sorn twin oven and oil burner for central heating, set into a brick surround. This Burren home has a back hall, with easy garden access, and the ground floor includes a practical utility, and office/bedroom four with adjoining shower room, so it’s all fairly adaptable, for all ages, either independent teenagers or possibly accommodating a grandparent.

Upstairs, there’s three more bedrooms, two en suites, and main family bathroom, making for four bath/shower rooms in all. Back outside, the land (almost five acres, with further available separately if needs be) is in several post and rail paddocks, with gardens, stable yard with three lose boxes and tack room, there’s easy parking and turning and veg beds as well.

VERDICT: Done by a pro.