VIDEO: Kinsale’s Bridgehill boasts views of the Bandon river and origami-like contemporary architecture
THE couple who own Kinsale’s Bridgehill have an adventurous spirit — and even their times at the house they’ve enjoyed for the last eight years bear testimony to their get up and go attitude.
Apart from being the name of a Prussian summer villa or palace,Bridgehill’s fortunate owners embrace a carefree attitude and travel bug, and are selling up to move to part/retirework in Spain.
They moved here, upriver of Kinsale, back in 2007 to take on the completion of a part-finished work of origami-like contemporary architecture, moving from city and suburbs, and they’ve embraced the outdoor, natural and scenery-blessed life here by Barrell’s Cross, with much gusto since.
Oh, and in the past decade or so, they also have taken on challenges like the gusts and squalls of the globe’s southern oceans, sailing from the Cape of Good Hope in Southern America to Cape Horn in South Africa. And, then making the rest of the way home to Ireland by BMW motorbike. As you do.
This house featured as an unfinished project in these pages, then called Water’s Edge, guiding at €1.5m back in 2006 (before Price Register transparency, so it’s not publicly know what it changed hands for,) and while the structure was done, and it was weather-tight, it needed doors, floors, bathrooms, plastering, second fix plumbing and electrics, and landscaping of a very raw and sloping.
It got everything done by its enthusiastic purchasers and they say the bulk of the work was done in six months, and they were in their new home by 2007.
To get to the final stages, and to understand the house’s workings, they got back onto the house’s original architect Jim Leahy, who quipped to them “it was a bit like getting my baby back” as he embraced the final finishes with them.
Coming on board were Goleen Construction and a string of quality tradespeople, lighting experts like Wink and Mimo, and Peter Walsh for wide-plant walnut flooring on concrete floors, heated from underneath in the Ducon concrete slab.
Architect Jim Leahy’s not known for making build projects too easy or “out of the box” for builders; he likes to explore more geometric shapes, including circles - of which Bridgehill comprises two, including a 20’ high-ceilinged, drum-shaped living room — and his roofs are rarely simple either. It’s rare he’ll have a simple pitch, or a flat roof, and true to form, this place’s crowning glory is a series of slopes and folds and flaps, like a Transformer toy version of a house that opens out to the skies.
It’s lofty and on multi-levels, and under the roof’s folds is an apex glass ridge or lantern, linking into other clerestory glazed sections also on high: the net result is a house core that’s drenched in light, but all-weather and weather-tight.
We visited on a dreary Monday this week, with views of the Bandon river slated in driving rain at a low-tide, and even then the interior was bright, and the views down along a wooded glen to the water were eye-catching.
The photographs had been taken on the Saturday, in far finer weather, but it’s a place for all seasons, say the owners, proud of its B3 BER rating, solar panels for water heating, and energy-efficient aspect and orientation.
“There can’t be too many houses with all the features that we have here, with river views to the west, so you get the sun setting over the water, it gets light all day around and all the main rooms are positioned for views and light, there’s a stream at the boundary that you can hear in the silences. Plus, it’s a Jim Leahy house, and it’s Kinsale,” enthuse the owners.
Location-wise, it’s at Kilnacloona at Barrell’s Cross, about four miles from Kinsale town, reached over the ‘new’ bridge serving Castlepark, Sandycove, Ballinspittle, Garrettstown, plus the Old Head — and, it’s also on the first few miles of the official Wild Atlantic Way too. The road past this house’s 0.8 acre site is now quite a private country road, ending in a cul de sac and serving only a handful of blessedly sited homes.
At one stage, this road was far busier; this was hilly section up from the ‘old’, narrow River Bandon bridge further upriver from Kinsale, which was eventually closed and replaced after weight restrictions meant traffic had to be restricted to one lane at a time, with barrels all along the bridge, giving an extra dimension and resonance to the Barrell’s Cross address.
Bridgehill’s setting is indeed special: up to the west, across a cleft of glen and up on a height, is the gable wall of a ruined farmhouse, a striking silhouette and locational marker, while across the water is Tisaxon and Ballywilliam, a quiet backwater with up-market homes, including the Georgian home of American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, with over 10 million album sales to her credit, and enabling homes in Cornwall, the US and in Kinsale.
Bridgehill’s owners now are decamping themselves to Spain, off delightedly on another life chapter after Irish businesses opened an opportunity too to work in sunnier climes, and as a result the 3,000 sq ft, three-bedroomed one-off is listed with estate agent Johnny O’Flynnand Sheila O’Flynn of Sherry FitzGerald with a €1.2m price guide.
It’s one of several €1m-plus Kinsale listings they have right now, with another, called Empat over at Ardbrack with a €1.3m asking price for its US owners, thanks to its top-tier location overlooking James Fort.
And, Sherry FitzGerald still have the sublime, sanctuary-like home called Tearmann, on eleven wooded acres further up and across the Bandon river by Dunderrow.
Developed by UCC’s President Michael Murphy and his wife Siobán, the 4,000 sq ft Tearmann was built in 2011 went to market in November 2014, guiding €1.8m and that’s now reduced to €1.5m. Oh, and the design was by Jim Leahy, and it too has a cylindrical shaped main room.
Yet, despite the same architect, and River Bandon locations near Kinsale, Bridgehill and Tearmann are in their own ways as individual as their sites, and each is quite site specific too.
Here, you get glimpses of something special unfolding even before you get to the entrance drive snaking down an approach avenue fronted in Liscannor stone: the roof’s glazed section is a give-away for the quiet architectural dramas to follow, with cantilevered terraces, deep eaves, and lots of access points from individual rooms to view points, grounds, and the outdoor hot tub reached from the house’s master suite, basking in the reflected glories of a bank of solar panels.
Although there’s a full 3,000 sq ft here, and some exceptional rooms, right now there are only three bedrooms, each en suite, with two off to the left of the hall, and the master bedroom is huge, with double aspect north-west corner window for sunset views. This over-sized room has a reading area with lots of glazing, a walk-in dressing room, en suite with Jura limestone finishes featuring heavily.
Jura is a fossil rich stone, quarried mostly in Germany, and here it features in bathrooms, wall tiles, floor tiles and more: the owners even asked the stone cutters if they could make wash basins from it, and they obliged, with oval his’n’hers bowls in the en suite, fed by cascade taps. The same obliging stone cutters also made up circular stepping stones to lead out across the gravel terrace to the west-facing hot-tub, lit by multi-hued LED lights — but even they are no match for nature’s own dramatic, evening time sunsets across banks of cloud.
This a place to relax into, inside and outside. There’s not too much maintenance in the 0.8 acre site, with a modicum of nitrogen-rich grass, and stone chip drive, ringed
by hornbeam hedging and with some feature beds of David Austin roses. A portion of the site drops down to a stream in a green ravine, and this setting (and the owner’s smitten stance by a window admiring it, just after purchasing the house in a shell state) triggered poet Theo Dorgan to write a poem for the moment, when he visited his ocean-sailing crew mates chez Kinsale. It’s now framed on the living room wall.
Back in the land of property prose, to the back corner of the site, a path picked up in large rocks leads up to veg and herb beds in raise frame: “The builder suggested a path snaking and twisting up instead of steps, so you can use a wheelbarrow to get stuff up and down,” say the green-fingered couple who still have a good selection of crops to plough through this side of Christmas.
The house itself adapts to the site’s slope, so it’s effectively over-basement, and you can drive down around to a lower level garage/store with roller door, with access to a west-facing lower level family room in one wing by a plant room that runs the house’s heating controls, solar heat pump and hot water tank, plus central vacuum motor.
Off on the house’s far side a second stairs drops from the kitchen to an enormous, multi-purpose utility room, with garden/exterior access, and simple double doors open to a massive ‘secret’ circular store, space left over underneath the 20’ diameter living room, with head-height crawl-space.
Back upstairs, in the house ‘proper’, there’s a bit of hide and reveal going on once past the circular or drum-shaped entrance hall: it has tapering clerestory windows overhead, and a long spine of apex glazing draws top-lighting down to the link corridor and seven Jura stone steps to the even larger drum-shaped living room.
Its circular shape is echoed by a circle of suspended track spotlighting, and picked up again in part by a semi-circular sofa, sourced like much of the furniture and some of the lighting at the time via Wink, and Michael Haberbosch and Monika Hary of Mimo.
Furniture includes some design classics, too, such as the Le Corbusier LC4 Chaise Longue, an inviting curl-up curve in black leather on a chrome stand: here, it looks as good outside in the November sun as it does inside by the 14kw ‘Arrow’ wood burning stove in the living room. This beast of a heater is set into a tall, white marble fireplace, specially made by Nagle Fireplaces Mallow, and heat circulates widely and broadly if connecting doors are left open.
To the side of this dome of a room is the kitchen/diner, done in a contemporary style in painted solid timber by Linehan Design, full of curves, stone topped, exquisitely made and very ergonomic, matched with top brand appliances like Neff, and what looks like a light over the hob is actually a cleverly designed filtering extract unit.
It’s one of the house’s quirks, as is hearing the owner recount how he swapped his Africa-conquering 1100cc BMW motorbike for a friend’s labours in creating a central, enclosed Zen garden’ with water feature, and prompting thoughts of the 1970s cult classic novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with its philosophical musings on the meaning of ‘quality.’
As it comes to market, Bridgehill is a quality house that has been fully occupied by a couple who were too young to ‘trade down,’ and now after eight years have itchy feet.
In new ownership, its current bedrooms tally of three can (if needs be), easily be added to by adapting some of the lower level spaces, subject to planning.
Selling agents Sherry FitzGerald can expect the ‘Kinsale Halo Effect’ to work some magic in this Kinsale sale, of a superbly sited one-off.
Fully realised dream.
Sq m 280 (3,000 sq ft)
3
4
B3
Designed for special site
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