An option to whey up in Mitchelstown, Cork

This property clicked with Tommy Barker while photographer Denis Scannell had the task of saying cheese.

Mitchelstown, Cork €240,000

Size: 204 sq m (2,200 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 5

Bathrooms: 2

BER: N/A

Best Feature: Vintage block

A Mitchelstown home, new to the market, and thus leaving family hands for the first time in its 70 years, has a claim to be a real slice of local history, and to its decades of prosperity.

And, with a bit of extra spending, this family home called Lisheen on its big town-centre site could become the cream of the crop locally too, it’s suggested.

The detached, five-bed home on 0.6 acres on Mitchelstown’s Clonmel Road has the town’s co-op and creamery life it its blood. It was built post-World War 11 by a WD Hayes, who came as a UCC graduate to work at Mitcheltown Creameries.

That was just after the co-op was given a Government monopoly in 1932 to produce processed cheeses. Its by-product, whey, also lead to the setting up of the Galtee pig industry.

In 1941, Mr Hayes married a Nellie O’Brien, who was a daughter of an old Mitchelstown farming family; her father Con O’Brien was chairman of Mitchelstown Coop for 40 years.

Cahir-born WD Hayes and Nellie O’Brien bought Lisheen’s 0.6 acre site in ’46, and started to build what was then an impressive detached home, on WD’s workplace’s doorstep.

Locals say it was one of the first substantial, block-built homes of the time in the area, as befitted a man and manager on the move.

With a special interest in cheeses, WD Hayes rose to be assistant general manager of Mitchelstown Creameries, retiring after 43 years in 1978. The business is now known as Dairygold, since a 1990 amalgamation with the even older co-op, Ballyclough.

In Hayes/O’Brien family hands since, Lisheen had got its name from a 1907 Irish novel Lisheen (set in Kerry and telling the story a landlord who turns to philanthropy after visiting his tenants incognito).

The novel was penned by the prolific poet and writer, the socially-engaged north Cork cleric, Canon Sheehan of Doneraile.

The family say a large bookcase still in Lisheen came from Canon Sheehan’s original Doneraile home, and was a wedding present bought at auction for the couple.

A further wedding present was the stairs’ mahogany hand-rail in situ which came from the 100-acre Clonkilla, Mitchelstown home of Land League leader John Mandeville, who had died in 1888.

So, now listed for sale with Eamonn O’Brien of CCM Property Services in Mitchelstown, this proud family home carries a €240,000 price guide.

CCM auctioneer Eamonn O’Brien feels there’s enough special about Lisheen to attract interest both from near and further afield: it’s just 500 metres from the town centre, and almost on the doorstep of Dairygold’s relocated HQ, and rental and housing demand locally is good, he notes, with Aldi’s 160-job distribution base in Mitchelstown.

Lisheen has 2,200 sq ft, oil central heating, and an Aga, great long, walled-in town gardens, a detached 350 sq ft garage and the vendors have done a refurbishment budget estimate that will bring it all bang up to date, for a further €70,000 or so.

“A young couple will find it impossible to purchase this level of value in a comparable new build, and the level of space and location will not be matched,” says CCM’s Eamonn O’Brien.

VERDICT: Say cheese.