House of the Week: Rosscarbery, West Cork - €295,000
115sq m (1,238sq ft)
3
2
D1
And, the preponderance of the latter, standing stones, is apt, given the word Ebenezer comes from the Bible, where Samuel erected a stone to commemorate a victory over the Philistines marking “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” Ebenezer now is taken to mean ‘stone of help.’
After many generations of family links to this setting at Ardagh East, a mile from Rosscarbery, this Ebenezer is now being sold by a current generation of city-based appreciative owners, who’ve most recently used it as a second/holiday home.
They themselves are now moving on — albeit a bit reluctantly — as they’ve a new family home move underway back in the city, where they want to spend more time with baby grandchildren.
This rock solid house is just over a century old, dating to 1913, and it replaced an earlier dwelling, and that possibly accounts for the extra bit of head height it has internally, compared to many older era farm house builds.
The vendor says the place had left family hands at one stage, and by good fortune came back into his mother’s hands unexpectedly, and she reached for the Old Testament to christen it Ebenezer.
“We are sad of course to be selling now, as the site there has been in my mother’s family for six generations, but needs must.....and my mother did give her blessing to sell it!” he adds thankfully.
Ebenezer is a c 1,250 sq ft, two-storey three-bedroomed home, in immaculate order, set behind low stone walls and pillars, with easy-keep gravel apron and drive, dotted with seasonal flowering anemones and with mature tree boundaries, as well as some attractive, low stone outbuildings, (there’s an old stone quarry away to the north).
Selling agent is Ray O’Neill of Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill in Clonakilty, who guides just under the €300,000 mark, at €295k, and even though it’s a late-in-the-summer arrival, he feels it will find appreciation among viewers, followed by bidding activity.
It could be hosting its new owners by Christmas?
Mr O’Neill says this traditional, stone and slate home “has been carefully crafted into a home of character”, and adds it’s on a site of 0.75 of an acre.
A series of adjacent courtyard spaces runs to about 40’, and has conversion scope as stores, studios, or, if sufficiently upgraded, to extra living accommodation.
Still showing the quality of its sandstone construction externally, as it has not been rendered, Ebenezer is a smart, slate-topped three-bay home with ground floor living room with slate and cast iron fireplace on one side, and second reception/dining room across the central hall with a multi-fuel stove in a second chimney. (There’s also oil central heating, and pvc double glazed windows, and it scores a solid D1 BER too.)
Both reception rooms have a double aspect, and there’s a modern kitchen with white painted units and white-painted ceiling boards off to the rear, with adjacent guest WC.
Overhead are three tidy bedrooms, with varnished pine board ceilings and slopes for extra height, and up at first floor level also is the main family bathroom, crisply renewed with fresh tiling, corner shower, and a slipper-style free-standing bath.
The landing is a little bit bigger than in the typical West Cork farmhouse too, so the owners have set up a seat here by the central, front window as a quiet reading spot.
Set just off a cul de sac road which curves around to end in a farm cluster at Ardagh East, it’s about a mile from the impressively-sited convent, church and village of Rosscarbery where, to continue the biblical theme of Ebenezer, the restaurant Pilgrims, has its own tribe of followers, as do the local bars and other longer established eateries such as O’Callaghan Walshe.
Clonakilty and Skibbereen towns are 20 minutes away, in opposite directions, while Cork city and airport are just over an hour’s drive away.
Ebenezer is testament to generations of caring owners.
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