Your chance to live the dream in Kinsale

Tommy Barker visits a unique home near Kinsale which was built to the highest spec by its now departing owners.

Sat, 26 May, 2018 - 01:00

Tommy Barker visits a unique home near Kinsale which was built to the highest spec by its now departing owners.

Rugby and the chance to play with Irish clubs, brought the owners of this hidden Kinsale area home to Ireland, and it also brought them, in a slightly more roundabout way, to finding this wood and hill-set site of 3.5 acres, on which to build a dream, one-off home.

And, now with two small daughters, an exceptionally finished large family home called Snugmore House to their credit, a work promotion is bringing them back to New Zealand once more.

When the Irish Examiner visited last Friday, Snugmore House was virtually bare of all of its furniture (the photographs here were taken a few weeks ago), now gone into storage and set for a two-month trip to the other side of the world. As a result, the family camped on the floor, and was due to depart Ireland this past week.

It’s a strange and disconcerting reversal of the process of building and filling a family home and putting down roots, only to be taking the family’s treasures back out again, but the job offer was just too good (he’s a Kiwi, she’s Irish,) and the couple with two small daughter have travelled and lived abroad. The journey back to New Zealand’s another life chapter, brought about by good circumstances.

Luck played a part too in finding this site, set on the outskirts of Kinsale, next to the rugby club, here since the early 1980s, and home to the Heineken Sevens in May each year.and every

Back around five years ago, the sports club was offered more land on its doorstep, and it included an old wooded section, sloping down towards the shoreline by Oysterhaven/Belgooly Creek, in a very scenic setting, yet within a walk of the town.

The land lot include the ruins/shell of the old Snugmore House, thought to go back about 400 years, plus outbuildings which included an ancient coach-house, and planning had previously been refused for a house in this sylvan setting.

The couple took a punt, bought the section of land which was of no use to the rugby club, and drafted in the services of DMN Architects, with architect Kieran McDonagh of key assistance especially with the conservation angle of the old stone buildings, either side of this new-build.

The Irish/Kiwi couple gave a detailed design brief, including double-height internal spaces, open-plan kitchen/dining with living space down a few steps, specific glazing and bifold doors, lots of garden access points, finishes etc — “basically, everything you see here,” says the man of the house, almost ruefully, surveying the impact of their ‘vanished’ possessions.

As they now have Snugmore House up for sale, the good news for the next owners is the fact it’s an adaptable and intelligent layout, in an utterly private woodland setting, with tree-lined avenue, feature stone walls, wending paths, swathes of lawn, large multi-purpose steel 800 sq ft workshed, and stabilised walls of centuries-old original dwelling and old coach-house, binding it to its past.

With some 3,000 sq ft of top finishes, and an adaptable layout that allows for four to five bedrooms, use of one room as a home office with external access, and the option of a first-floor living room with wood-burning stove, it’s new to market, listed with estate agent Andy Donoghue of Clonakilty-based Hodnett Forde.

HF’s Mr Donoghue guides at €1.1m, and says local craftsmen delivered an ultra high end finish, and a B2 BER to keep Snugmore snug and cosy, despite its double- height spaces and large circulation spaces.

Builders were the Kinsale based Wright Brothers, and they worked closely with Brian Larkin of Woodland Kitchens in Ballyclough, Mallow, who did kitchen and other units, bespoke features and the crafted staircase linking to a Ducon slab at first floor level, and Wrights were so impressed they’ve since used Mr Larkin’s skills and crew on other local jobs, say this home’s occupants.

There’s an east/west aspect, windows are triple glazed, and the internal and external stonework in West Cork stone is a credit to the masons, done in drystone style, sharp at the corners, and internally the main feature is the stone, double-height chimney breast, home to a large double-sided stove, which serves the family living on one side and, up a few steps, the kitchen/dining room. The combined area is 37’ by 19’, opening to a sunny stone-flagged stone fringed terrace.

Also at ground is a playroom, a utility room, large hall and staircase, with panelling, a guest bedroom with en suite doubling as a guest WC thanks to dual access, and, next to the main entry point with standing seam roof, is a home office, with its own door access to the front patio.

Upstairs is a spacious landing, access to a balcony for garden views (foxes and deer are occasional visitors) and four bedrooms, with master en-suite with a tanked shower akin to a wetroom, whilst bathrooms are uniformly done to a high standard. Up here too is a withdrawing room, a quiet living space with second, smaller stove, while water heating is backed up by Kingspan solar panels on the slate roof of this quite timeless, unfussed and considered house design.

Access is down several hundred metres of shared unpaved lane, also linking one or two other houses and a farm, and, while the water’s tantalisingly close at the creek, there’s not a right of way access to the shore, and the glimpses of water seen from upstairs are likely to disappear when abundant trees on the boundaries come into summer cloaks of leaves.

Hodnett Forde’s Andy Donoghue says the entire package is quite unique, so close to Kinsale town and services, schools, sports facilities and bars and restaurants, while having a woodland cocoon to its credit.

VERDICT: Snug out.

Kinsale, Co Cork