North Cregg House in Fermoy known for its happy madness
Anyone who drives a 1991 VW Transporter with a DIY flip-down kitchen and a pot plant clinging to the dashboard is likely to have an interesting house.
Simon Barber’s lofty figure is well known around the town of Fermoy, not only for his family’s business on Patrick’s Street but for his elegant 19th-century mode of dress. He’s always in some unexpected gentleman’s hat for a start and a vintage wrist watch re-imagined with reclaimed, fascinating things sitting up on his tweed waistcoat.
JJ Barber jewellers is the oldest of the retail premises in Fermoy, established in 1869 on Artillery Quay (now O’Neill Crowley Quay), when the British Army barracks was at the heart of local town life. The family has roots in the town of Sheffield in England, famed for its silversmithing. Simon is the fifth generation, taking over from his father Dermot and mother Evelyn in 2005.
Having tinkered his way through delicate saw work at his father’s side, cutting out thousands of coins, Simon undertook gruelling and infamously expensive State co-funded training through the Irish/Swiss Institute of Horology in Blanchardstown.
Completing further studies in arts and crafts at St John’s Central College in Cork in 2005, Simon returned his artist’s eye to the bench at JJ Barber full time.
Despite an inherent modesty, his own line of jewellery ‘Findings’ is creating enormous interest. Many of the pieces have a tension between the banal and the precious, marrying weathered found objects — a sliver of tin from a shed roof; clock cogs and sherds of Victorian sea-tumbled pottery— into jewellery with an intriguing, tribal feel. Increasingly fine, the pieces celebrate plain materials, curating them into something highly desirable. That spirit of making the ordinary thing extraordinary is written large at Simon’s home.
In a copse of native trees, North Cregg is in essence a typical two up, two down Irish farmhouse, and can be found on ordinance survey maps from the early 1800s. Given our talent for clinging to a place through famine and uproar, it may be even older, and Simon suggests this house was stitched together using three adjoining dwellings.
It sits in the gentrified demesne of North Cregg, three minutes from the topiared entrance of Castlehyde. When Simon and his wife Maria bought the house in 2007 at the height of the boom, the purchase was a financial hazard for the young couple – but a thrill nonetheless.
“My aunt had owned the house, so it was familiar to me,” explains Simon. “I always loved the proximity to the river across the road. She moved away to Waterford and it came onto the open market. Maria wasn’t even in the country. We were jaded at the alternative starter-homes we were being offered, so I jumped and was lucky enough to get it.”
Having lived in the house, and happily making do with four rooms and a couple of pantries, they began renovations in the November of 2010’s cruel winter.
The current approach to laying more modern metres on a vernacular Irish building is to throw up a heavily glazed connection and to isolate the more contemporary structure from the old house. As the site was decidedly tight, the Barbers decided against a hand-hold of old and new volumes, dovetailing the addition directly to the original home instead.
A two-storey, L-shaped solution in timber frame was wrapped around the north and west of the original footprint. To appease the planners, a render finish faces the roadside, visually simplifying the changes which are signalled by a flat roof . To the rear, the extension features vertical cedar cladding by Cedarlan, Cork.
The house had no foundation – a not unusual revelation in such an ancient ’stead. Neighbour, Oliver McCarthy, helped them with the logical, appropriate design, and they were initially content to stay during the upgrades to the existing house and the bold extension. Simon explains: “Maria was pregnant with our first child. Like all old houses, pulling back the fabric revealed more work was needed.
“We realised the roof would have to come off completely, and on top of that the pipes were repeatedly freezing. We eventually fled to my mother’s house!”
Major works were completed in June 2011. The family have taken a commendable laid-back approach, patiently continuing the project as time, skilled trades and budget allow. It’s a house with a natural spirit of place, and the Barbers and their two young sons, Sam and Leo, now have twice the room to enjoy there.
Stepping under a flock of hats, roosting up the walls of the tiny, atmospheric front hall, a 1920s Rayburn stands in loyal welcome in the old kitchen, now relieved of its full heating duties.
Simon’s eclectic ‘improvements’ include half a dozen industrial machine gauges sitting up Willy-Wonka style to the back of the range’s top plate. Insulated concrete floors, painted dove grey and left with a pleasing riven texture, connect this room through the original two foot thick exterior north wall to today’s kitchen/diner at the rear. With the exception of one or two flirts with feature wallpaper, the paintwork is white throughout the house.
Inspired by a Kerf Design®, the plywood kitchen units were built by Tom Clancy of Fermoy Kitchens.
A hearty counter was delivered using three plywood boards finished in Spectrum Yellow Formica® and supported by stocky in-cabinet doors and drawers. “I knew Kerf Design® of Atlanta in the States, from my student days, and we both really wanted something in the same style,” says Simon. Plywood cabinetry married to searing counter colours are big news in interiors right now. It’s energising to see the material used to such beautiful effect in a traditional Irish house, and the Barbers’ investment in environmentally friendly Formica® is little surprise.
The rounded U shape of the design offers gentle industrial flair, with cut out handles, and a rhythmical, raw core of ply’ left on show at the edges. A tambour used to enclose one cupboard on the peninsula was saved from a 1920s wardrobe found in the house. Asked about price, Maria says their bespoke birch ply kitchen was comparable to a mid-range offering from the high street. It looks all the money.
Most of the vintage furniture and boards found on site were integrated back into the interior in some way or other. Outside, a dozen candy coloured marine buoys sway from ropes on a hunching, ancient oak, spread protectively over the rear garden.
Travelling west along the connecting seam of the old and new build, we reach a new living space referred to as the Monkey Room. It’s named for their little four-year-old monkey, Sam’s antics, and comprises the west gable — brought right up to date with a square glazed bay and 9’ ceiling.
The drum of a washing machine serves as a pendant light — the tiny drains reading as Moroccan piercing (and stunning when lit - see the video). The windows by Munster Joinery are plain dark grey frames and hearty windowsills were fashioned from floor boards saved during the renovation. A slender shelf traced around this long room about 15cm below ceiling height offers an ingenious architectural shadow gap.
The mixture of up-cycled furnishings, new buys and Simon’s creative abilities (for example, taking on a Steuart Padwick standard lamp) makes for an adult, primate-free room. A wooden train-set signals that young wildlife might possibly be penned-in, waiting behind the sofa. The artwork is all home produced, showcasing Simon’s photography and family works. Blocks of timber carry gem shaded details of photos, organised symmetrically into a single, striking work.
Pulling open a hearty period door, disguised on the other side as a bookcase, we step back into the old house, and a warm, cloistered family snug with yet another antique radiator.
“We bought them all over the place,” Simon reflects, “and gave them a good going over with a wire brush and then painted them up ourselves. They work perfectly.”
The 19th-century fat timber stairs are a blessed survivor, rubbed butter soft, with two flip-up steps used for storage in the hall. The whole rise is finished in a rhythm of colour to the treads and the steep stairwell is bejewelled with 66 vintage alarm clocks, their cabochon faces gleaming in sets of six, on 11 open shelves.
It’s a small triumph in an incidental space using an accumulated collection with no intrinsic value, but gorgeous enough ‘en corps’ to illicit a gasp.
Simon and Maria now enjoy four bedrooms in their new house and their bedroom follows the measurements and aspect of the Monkey Room, with a bay window for distant river views and a long window to the north west corner that suspends you in the canopy of magnificent trees on the boundary.
There’s plenty to look at with it’s spare, individual styling, but the landmark piece in this room is a monumental chest, put together using multiple disparate polished wood drawers in a plywood carcass by furniture artist and friend Mike Healy. The antique handles and pulls, without repairs to veneering, recall the superb balance of raw to finished, present in Simon’s jewels.
There are distant views of the Blackwater from these upstairs rooms. Simon shrugs with a stoic resignation: “I was all organised to get to work by boat, I even rigged an electric motor from a car battery, but the shallowness of the water and the water weeds defeated that little dream.”
In the garden, the couple’s fearless joy for economic invention continues. Brightly painted bird houses stud the trees in a fall of land to the west. “I’m no gardener,” says Maria smiling, her new baby Leo nestled in bliss in the crook of her arm, “so we decorate the trees and grounds to make up for it.”
The back of a former Land Rover serves as the deck of a pirate ship for their eldest son. A pizza oven made from cob (straw and clay) sits at shoulder height in their patio space, the paving, walls and steps all patiently accrued and home built in recovered stone from the surrounding fields.
I ask Simon about a large rusty wheel with multiple cogs marking out their entertaining area. “I don’t know what it is, but it does this,” he says with quiet, faraway satisfaction, slowly turning a handle that sets it in perfect, liquid motion.
The lesson from this house is that once the practicalities are covered, the most magical thing to make a home is to put as much of your own happy madness into the place as possible.
Denis Scannell
Key elements to get the right feel for a Kerf Design style kitchen include plywood cabinetry, and an exposed edge to show the core of the ply’ on the in-cabinet drawers. Include a bright colour for the worktop and squared-off, cut-out handles on the press fronts.
If you’re not up to attempting a Padwick-style floor lamp as Simon has done, grab yourself an original Steuart Padwick Sticks floor-light. Made in oiled oak with a counter-balanced weighted arm — it’s already an award winning design classic. Padwick floor lamp €540, polyvore.com/ www.steuartpadwick.com
The range is a footprint in the journey of an old house. If you have an original cast iron stove in place, consider having it reconditioned. Prices to buy a genuine Stanley 8 with a domestic hot water boiler start at €1,800 and Rayburns at €2,500. Try H&F Cast Iron Ranges. Handfenterprises.ie
Large animal skulls have a sculptural beauty and faux taxidermy has come a long way if you’re disturbed by the real article. April & the Bear offer a highly convincing large bull’s skull with fabulous horns for €305. Harvey Norman’s table skull on a foot is just €115.
Two words to describe this North Cregg home with its spare styling, warm textiles and inventive artwork, would be eclectic contemporary, otherwise described as bohemian modern. It’s a look that may be up to date, but it won’t be stifled by the add-water-and-stir approach of shop bought everything. If you want a way into the look pick up a copy of Emily Henson’s Bohemian Modern, Ryland Peters and Small, €29.50 (Easons)
Simon Barber with some of his jewellery pieces. His work can be found at and on Facebook and of course, at this shop in Fermoy.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
