Down by the riverside

ALONG and bustling history comes with Riverbank House and Quay, a River Bandon-set home that gives its owners the chance to sail the seven seas — if they start off leaving on a high tide.

River Bandon, Cork

€525,000

Sq m 300/two acres

Bedrooms: 5

Bathrooms: 5

BER Rating: C2

Best Feature: Boat persons bliss

The current occupants of the 1840s-built large home, upriver of Kinsale near Innishannon, arrived by boat from UK’s River Hamble, via the Scilly Isles, dropping anchor here in 1993, taking on the venerable old home, and giving it new life and purpose.

Carers for the last 21 years have been English couple Trevor and Marianne Stuckey, who enjoyed boating here, restored the 230-feet of 19th century quay walls, added a slipway, and took in paying guests to the house to make it pay its passage. However, after those years — and especially after a 2005 work accident which left Mr Stuckey with a spinal injury, forcing them to adapt their home with lifts and other disabled access enhancements, they’ve decided it is finally time to part company with the house.

It’s for sale now with Don Brennan of Sherry FitzGerald Brennan Busteed in Bandon, who seek offers around €525,000 for the spacious, five-bed and part-upgraded period property.

Riverbank was built by coal importer Robert Edward, on Frewin family land, who had a weather eye out for landing coal for the West Cork railway here and at nearby Colliers Quay. In the mid 1900s it was bought by retired RAF pilot Flt Lt George H Allison. He turned it to hotel use, as the Riverbank Hotel, with a bar, and it attracted a mixed bag of guests, many of them lured by his angling lore and lures, coming for fishing and shooting holidays.

Later again, it was run as an inn and B&B by a John Dorman, and he continued it in B&B use through the 1980s, a tradition the Stuckeys subsequently re-connected with.

On two acres, Riverbank House is a large, solid stone-built, two-storey over lower ground-level home, with characterful rooms retaining old world features, and four of its five bedrooms are en suite.

The two principal reception rooms have Waterford wood-burning stoves, and the kitchen has an oil-fired Stanley range. The house’s grounds can supply enough timber from ash, oak, sycamore and laurels (seeing as how colliers boats don’t land any more), and for the more indolent, there’s also an efficient condenser boiler for central heating.

And, it’s all in a special setting, just ten miles from Cork city, and near both Kinsale and Bandon, by road or by water, though upriver Bandon would challenge even a skilled canoeist to get go against the river’s currents and rapids. Kinsale, however, is readily navigable on the tide.

The adjoining quay (with lifting derricks) can take a boat of up to 70-feet, so to there may be scope for a boat-related enterprise. In any case, there’s also quiet country lanes to cycle and walk along.

Land included with the property (circa two acres) includes tended and feature-packed gardens and walled-in courtyard and patio BBQ area with steel shed, a polytunnel, as well as some meadow with stream frontage, and hillside with remains of an original Iron Age cliff fort.

With both pedestrian and car access with parking, Riverbank is two kilometres from Innishannon, on the Kilmacsimon road which runs on the opposite bank to Shippool woods, while Cork city and airport are a 20-minute car journey.

VERDICT: A quirky, historical one-off, by the Bandon river.