House of the week

Kilmaloda House near Timoleague, Co Cork, was built as the country seat of the Beamish family.

IT’S time to roll up the sleeves at Kilmaloda House, as this 210-year-old country house near West Cork’s Timoleague gets set to change hands again, after a 40-year spell in current family ownership.

Though still standing straight and true, and with several fine distinguishing architectural features, as well as some smashing stone and slate outbuildings dotted around, plus a walled garden, it’s a retreat where time has taken a bit of a toll, and where much of its once extensive lands that merited extensive extra buildings and staff, have been sold off.

The Georgian home, Kilmaloda House, was built as a country seat of the Beamish family of brewing repute, and was once the centre of a large estate of prime land around Timoleague and by the Argideen river, within easy striking distance of Kinsale, Bandon and Clonakilty, with Cork city and its airport a 40 minute commute.

That proximity may help find a buyer for Kilmaloda, as it comes up on the open market with David Busteed of Sherry FitzGerald Brennan Busteed in Bandon, and with Philip Guckian of Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes in Dublin. Its price guided at €750,000, which equates to €100 per square foot for a the 7,500 sq ft over-basement home. Extras ‘thrown in’ to the equation include 15 acres of land, 200-year-old hardwood trees and some ornamental gardens, stone courtyard buildings and stores, an old flax mill building, butter-cup strewn paddock, plus two acres of overgrown walled garden. There’s also the outline of the old croquet lawn down stone steps from the front drive, and a quaint mid 1900s garden/croquet house with ornate pebble geometric features inset to a cast concrete pagoda.That wee garden room hints at the romance that Kilmaloda’s owners had for the property, but today’s viewers will have to flesh out their own romantic draws — and finances — to restore it to original finery.

Little has changed in decades, bar perhaps some vinyl tiles in the back hall, and a 1970s Murray kitchen matching some lurid 1960s colours. The good news is the amount of original features still here, from sash windows and shutters to old floors, flagstones, tiles, fireplaces and matching fanlight windows, one over the front door, with a slightly smaller counterpart in the entrance hallway, by a very elegant cantilevered staircase and arched rear window. The old servants’ bells still give the occasional ring, in memory of times past.

The less-good news is the sheer amount of space needing new purposes, from the many utterly original basement rooms to the enormous attic rooms under hefty original beams and slates, home to old nursery toys and suitcases that could be a century old.

In between there are five bedrooms now across its front five-bay facade plus two more behind, and the ground floor (reached front and back over steps or a bridge over the wide ‘moat’-like recess allowing the basement rooms stay bright and dry) has two very elegant formal rooms in front with elaborate ceiling plaster and frieze work. There are four rear rooms including kitchen with oil-burning Aga, a more modern incarnation of the ancient range in the original basement kitchen.

Back in its heyday, and into the early 1900s when owned by Sampson Beamish, Kilmaloda had up to six indoor staff and 10 estate workers. Irish RM writer Edith Somerville, in a diary entry, describes going by train “to hunt with Dick Beamish’s hounds at Kilmaloda”. Subsequent owners included the McCarthy Morrogh family, members of the Burnett family of the London White Satin gin dynasty, and most recently, the Moseley family, including Retired Royal Navy Commander Charles Sheridan Moseley and his wife Ursula Anne Marie, who moved here from the UK with five children.

Location: Timoleague, west Cork

Price: €750,000

Size: Sq m 700 (7,500 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 7

Bathrooms: 3

BER rating: G

Best asset:Setting and scope

VERDICT: A project for a buyer with vision and passion for period living.