Living well with fly-by wildlife in Rossmore, Clonakilty
MAKING precious objects from ordinary things is what artist Anne Harrington Rees does with much of her exquisite and award-winning basketry and craft work.
It’s also what she and her Welsh-born ecologist husband David Rees have done, in a few short years, at this Rossmore, West Cork, small-holding.
Respect for the natural environment is second nature to this couple, who only bought this Caherkirky home three years ago, and who’ve since planted it knowledgeably, scooped out a pond for dragonflies and assorted bugs and critters, encouraged the bird life and wildlife — and made the home far more comfortable for humans in the interim also.
Now, after a number of years living in West Cork, first in Timoleague and latterly more inland here, eight miles north of Clonakilty and after putting down literal and metaphorical roots in lovely, rural Rossmore, they are unexpectedly on the move once more.
David has a new job, back with the Royal Society for Protection of Birds in Anglesea, Wales, where they’ve lived and worked before (he ran a 270 hectare reserve there previously, and worked as an ecological consultant in Ireland.)
Back in 2012, they bought this 1,400 sq ft re-build of a traditional West Cork farmhouse on an acre amid farmland and traditional holdings.
It’s about a mile from Rossmore, home to a well-known theatre festival and weekly summer shows, and it’s set a few hundred metres along a lovely boreen with a stripe of green grass up its centre, great for cleaning the undercarriage of low-slung city cars, or like a one-dimension instrument landing system for visitors.
And, thanks to new hedgerow plantings such as blackthorn, hawthorn, hazel, elder, spindle, holly, elm, guelder rose and willow, plus maintenance of old ditches and existing native trees (and cherries), the pond and some judicious feeding, this property has also become a sort of landing spot for birds of many hues and feathers.
Both keen ‘birders’ or twitchers, David and Anne have catalogued over 60 varieties of birds, passers by and nesters by their doorstep, and apart from the more common, they’ve also seen Yelllowhammer (with six or seven pairs feeding here in winter), Hen harrier, Chough, Wheatear, Crossbill, Redpoll, Jay, Buzzard, Barn owl, Linnet and a flock of Golden plover in nearby fields.
Helping in the catalogue is the sheer length and variety of views they have, south-west to the hills and wind farms at Caheragh, north to the Paps.
The light from the Galley Head lighthouse — 10 or 12 miles away as the gull swoops — sweeps across an adjoining nitrogen fed-field currently in pasture, giving it the local name ‘the Galley Field.’
On its own more naturally green acre, complete with wild meadow patches, willow which is free-growing and intertwined (something to do with Anne’s basketry impulse, perhaps?) this homely detached house was built by different owners in 2002, on the site of an older dwelling.
They built it a bit taller than the older house, with 10’ ceilings inside, and rightly kept useful old stone sheds alongside, reroofing them with corrugated iron, country style, grounding them to the site and its past. They also integrated some quality salvaged items, such as pitch pine doors and sanitary ware.
Next, it was renovated/enhanced by David and Anne after they bought in 2012 when it was on the market for €170,000.
They put in a wood-burning stove in the living room, and a range cooker in the kitchen in a crafted stone hearth with hefty timber lintel, they put down quality oak floors, and opted for slate (Welsh, naturally) on the sun room floor.
Apart from the abundance of art and craft on display (including Anne’s own finely-worked fibre sculptures, which have won RDS national, UK and Eisteddfod of Wales craft and design awards), there is quality workmanship in evidence in this two-storey build.
One simple example is the stair handrail with its flowing curves in all the right angles, as pleasing to the hand as it is to the eye (it had to be painstaking stripped by hand, having inexplicably been painted day one).
The lofty hall has splay-set doors to the double aspect living room on one side, while the door to the kitchen/dining room is a lovely painted, salvaged old door with clear and blue glass inserts in a lattice or lozenge pattern.
The kitchen, meanwhile, is almost 20’ by 14’, with peninsula, and has painted IKEA units topped with birch.
Back, off the hall, is a guest WC/utility, and overhead are three south-facing bedrooms with painted ply floors, and hardwood top-hinged windows, painted an olive green on the outside to match other joinery.
The main family bathroom, with bath-shower, has some feature hand-made ceramic tiles by London-based artist Lubna Chowdhary, who has worked with the Conran Partnership amongst others.
Now listed for sale with Ernest Forde of Hodnett Forde at €285,000, this Caherkirky home is bright and warm, tranquil yet connected further afield with broadband, and condition is pristine inside. Outside, the look is naturally landscaped, as Kilkenny-born Anne Harrington trained and worked initially in landscape horticulture.
Apart from the compact pond and cascade, with swooping swallows and house martins using it as a drive-thru/fly-by for bug feasting, there’s the fabulous old fuchsia path/original entrance, woven willow beds, wildflower abundance, veg beds and views of an ever-changing landscape, where you can see the weather coming before it arrives, birds on the wing, and peace, dripping slow.
Wildlife, good life.
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