House of the week

IF YOU think five acres of private gardens (just past Cork City’s suburban boundaries) might be too much to maintain, shame on you: the caretaker-gardener is 82 years and drives his ride-on mower like a boy racer.

About the only things missing from the stripped-down lawnmower used by the octogenarian groundsman are alloy wheels and a spoiler: other than that, it’s a mean machine to match its pilot, who’s also incidentally a Papal Knight.

Here at the foot of Spur Hill, while the mower man didn’t quite labour in the vineyards of the Lord, he did the next best thing, tending the pristine five-acre gardens and lawns of well-known retired obstetrician and medical lecturer Paddy Kieran and Mary Kieran.