A musical house in which to hibernate

Tommy Barker finds scope and character in Kilkenny

There’s been a string of careful and improving owners at Kilkenny’s curiously-titled Hedgehog House — and going on early viewings, it won’t be on the market too long before going back into appreciative hands once more.

The current owners, musician and drummer Tom Osander from New York, and his German partner Tanja Raab, and two children, have just upped sticks to Berlin from their beloved Baunskeha rural townland base, near glorious Thomastown and the Nore Valley.

A previous owner was a High Court judge, and before that it belonged to guitarist/singer-songwriter the late great John Martyn’s partner, so it really has been steeped in music. So much so, in fact, that Lisa Hannigan’s first album Sea Sew had its pre-production sessions here in the converted lofty old stone barn, and Tom Osander also stroked his drum kit for Damien Rice’s multi-million debut selling, O. This June, Osander is back touring here with Dublin song writer and producer, Gavin Glass — so the walls of Hedgehog House will reverberate with measured beats once more.

For their family sojourn here, it’s been little short of paradise, Tom and Tanja reckon, a real love affair with Ireland, cemented by work done on this late 1800s stone Kilkenny farmhouse and outbuildings. Kilkenny does old farmyards spectacularly well.

It’s all on six acres of rural tranquillity, now planted with 1,000 trees to be cut and/or coppiced from a few short years time, to provide abundant firewood. Species include sweet chestnut, birch, hazel, ash, willow, as well as a fruit basket of orchard goodies.)

There’s even a special stove (one of several wood burners here) to take advantage of future wood burning bonanzas, in the main double-aspect living room. It’s got a 10kw glass-fronted fireplace/integrated stove connected up to a fan system to channel warm air to several parts of this long, generally one-room wide home.

It’s one of the sensible, and eco-aware quirks of this property, says selling agent Clodagh Daly, who sold it to the current owners, and who says she loved every minute of showing it back then too.

Given the amount of ground, old outbuildings, secret picnic spots and wooded copses, each viewing takes an unhurried hour and more.

It has been extended, over time, with the ‘back rooms’ having been converted from cow milking sheds about 15 years ago, and this end of the house can be partitioned for guests as it is, essentially, self-contained. There’s also scope to put the more unruly guests in any or all of the recently re-roofed outbuildings, with a bit more investment.

There’s already character, and scope, for keeping a few horses or ponies, and the family had donkeys here too. The ‘music’ barn is a high-ceilinged, part converted space and if its walls could talk, they’d rock and roll: “We’ve thrown a few serious bashes here over the years… but only the ghosts will tell you what went down,” Tom Osander quips, adding that, “they’d make an incredible studio complex for someone with the time and money to finance that kind of a project. It was on our ‘to-do’ list, that became a ’to-didn’t.”

The family weren’t idle here in Baunskeha, though. They re-did the country-style kitchen, but the real signature piece was the addition/creation of a massive lean-to sun room, running 40’ by 10’ wide along the entire back wall. Tucked in under the eaves, it draws in huge solar gain heat, stored in the old stone walls, and it has been set up with a flue for stove heating.

The glass roof/ceiling is an enormous, organic curved shape in long glass, quite some job of work, and its side windows were salvaged from an old convent, and mounted on a low seating base of stone and cob/clay, sheltered from the elements by the roof’s deep overhang. It’s a great space (part was envisaged as a glasshouse) and will be Tom and Tanja’s legacy (and the trees) to the next owners.

Other recent changes include the vented stove, installing double glazing, fencing, a new gravel drive, and a new vegetable/herb garden just a stone’s throw from the conservatory behind a curving stone shelter wall, a handy BBQ and seating spot.

As it now stands, in its tranquil courtyard setting currently being strafed by swallows, Hedgehog House is an adaptable and accommodating four/five bed home, with a choice and mix of reception rooms, some traditionally low-ceilinged, others with far higher, part-vaulted ceilings. Visually it’s rich with some flagstone floors, exposed stone walls, and a mix of old and new timbers.

Clodagh Daly reckons she’s got a swift summer seller on her hands, with an appetising house of size and quality, quirky but sensibly so, on a decent amount of ‘good life’ land, within a few miles of Thomastown, and a short drive to the M9 by Knocktopher.

The area’s rich in history and heritage, and fellow villages like Bennettsbridge and Inistioge add to the attractions of inland living by the Nore. Kilkenny City’s a 20 minute drive, and Dublin’s just 75 minutes distant, but a world away.

VERDICT: The Good Life, in spades.