Cork’s Rocklodge has glorious acres in a wooded valley setting

There’s plenty of room to swing a tennis racket or a golf club at a late sports legend’s home in Cork, writes Tommy Barker.

THERE’S an old tennis court, and a practice wall for hitting a tennis or soccer ball against, at Cork’s Rocklodge, but beware: the bar has been set rather high here for any aspiring sportspeople.

The period home on the edge of Cork city, and set in acres of dense and beautiful woodland at Carrigrohane just past Healy’s Bridge, is appealing in its own right, but has links to one of Ireland’s sporting gentlemen, the late Alan Haughton, who raised a family of five here from the 1940s, when Rocklodge was already 100 years old.

And he did it while running the venerable family timber business, Haughtons (later Brooks Haughton) with over 200 years of trading history, indulged his love of tennis and other sports, oversaw the creation of Rocklodge’s tennis court, knocked a ball against a wall by its old coachhouse stone buildings, and excelled at all things sporting.

Alan Haughton played in many Davis Cups and tennis internationals, advanced through several rounds at Wimbledon in the 1930s, amassed up to 120 Irish Open tennis titles, retired in his fifties only to take tennis up again in his sixties.

Along the way, he also played squash, table tennis, croquet, boules, snooker, and golf, and also played a competitive hand in bridge for decades after his tennis glory days, passing away in 2011, aged in his 90s.

The Haughton name is fondly recalled still around Rocklodge and the Coolatana valley, as a later generation also lived locally, while the local Rocklodge pitch and putt club started out in the 1950s on land leased above the house. It’s beyond the woods, reached from a higher road, started in the 1950s and 5.5 acres there was sold by Alan Haughton in the 1972 to ensure the club’s ongoing future.

Fore-sight? the setting is just a few miles from Cork city, just above the old Muskerry road, and the ninth fairway of Muskerry golf club also can be discerned across the valley, through the trees.

Rocklodge itself is set up a long, uphill private avenue off the Muskerry road, and its northern boundary stops abruptly behind the house, on high, at a spot called the Vagabond Rock, reportedly the scene of nefarious highway-like raids and robberies in previous centuries on what was then a key Cork to Kerry trading route.

The 1840s-built home, initially associated with the Bailey family of the Lee Road, left Haughton family hands about 20 years ago, bought once more as a family home, this time by a Cork hospital based medic. Now, with their family reared, and facing career moves abroad after study, they too are once more preparing to vacate.

The wholly-private and wonderfully woodland-set Rocklodge is listed this month with agents Michael O’Donovan and Catherine McAuliffe of Savills, Cork, on 12 acres, and they guide it at €1.45 million, saying “Rocklodge is one of Cork’s best period homes. It now comes to the open market in fine fettle and offers itself as a superb family home close to Cork city.”

That city proximity (necessary for target-market hospital-based consultants on call) , as much as its 5,200 sq ft of living and sleeping space, and all the acreage plus old tennis court and outbuildings, will be key to its sales appeal.

Factor in proximity too to strong employment bases in Ballincollig, and to Blarney and Apple at Hollyhill (5,000 jobs), and the buyer catchment spreads all the more.

The five-bay Victorian-era home — perhaps more Georgian villa in style, and with tall French windows to side terrace gardens — is in sound overall condition, and has a simple main floor plan, one main room per corner on each floor. This is added to by a linked two-storey annexe with both internal and external access across a small sheltered courtyard. This adds at least one further bedroom in a self-contained configuration, as well as a multi-use games room/gym, currently home to perhaps as many as a dozen set of golf clubs and golf bags.

Its current and departing owners are more into their golf than tennis, and presumably know every rood, perch, and hazard at the adjacent Muskerry golf course (if not at the eponymous Rocklodge pitch and putt), and so it’s hardly a surprise to find the tarmac and wired-in tennis court just a tad neglected, mossy and leaf strewn.

It’s up for a quick surface skim and repurposing, however, as are the old stable-like outbuildings and coach house by the late Alan Haughton’s tennis practice wall — they’re equally ripe for serviceable returns, and they are notable for the thickness of old stone walls and hefty timber lintels.

The main house itself is set back from the triangular front lawn, which allows cars to go full circle on approach and departure around a neat lawn, and the fluted and Doric columned entrance under a skirt of projecting porch and window bays is currently shrouded in a drape of wisteria, with smooth-worn limestone step by the front door.

That door is part glazed in small panes and probably is a later addition, not really suitable to the house’s architectural roots. It leads to a central, oak-floored hall, with offset staircase and good-sized rooms at all four corners, with kitchen/dining room to the south-facing front, with units made from sweet chestnut.

Most rooms in the main house, at ground and first floor level, are dual aspect, with original working sash windows, and fireplaces and corniced ceilings also feature.

Overall condition is good, straight and square for a home of this vintage, and the side wing, with second staircase and unpredictable flow of rooms adds to the overall functionality and purpose at Rocklodge, as it prepares to find new owners, who are likely to invest further in updates, redecoration and other discretionary alterations.

VERDICT: Real slice of sporting and business Cork history.

Carrigrohane, Cork

€1.45 million

Size: 483 sq m (5,200 sq ft) on 12 acres

Bedrooms: 4+1

Bathrooms: 5

BER: G