Home and away: How Australia inspired dream house in Kinsale 

The laidback lifestyle Down Under informs so much of Cork residence The Dockhouse inside and out

An Imola chair allows you enjoy the view from the upper-floor living area in The Dockhouse. 

Is it possible to build an Australian-inspired dream house in Ireland?

Kinsale Harbour may not catch as many rays as its Sydney counterpart, but that does not lessen the pleasures of The Dockhouse.

The Dockhouse, Kinsale, makes the most of its site, space and light. 

The laidback lifestyle Down Under informs so much of this Cork residence inside and out — a property conceived of long before the pandemic prompted every homeowner to embark on odysseys to discover the perfect indoor-outdoor sweet spot.

The dining area with and balcony with harbour view.

Éamon and Colette Foley set sail for Australia over a quarter of a century ago. Every year or two since they have returned to Ireland for holidays but found they were “always on the move, between visits to family and friends”, says Éamon, originally from Drogheda.

“The desire to have our own holiday home as a base was the idea behind building the house,” says Éamon.

He and Ballincollig native Colette and their children took inspiration from beach homes in Australia when drawing up their moodboard for The Dockhouse.

Enter Cork architect Nigel O’Sullivan (www.bdlab.ie) who designed the two-storey, which was constructed in 2019 by Ballincollig builder Raymond O’Mahony.

The residence was built to passive house standards and its structure is a timber frame wrapped in zinc cladding on an insulated concrete slab which includes underfloor heating.

The cantilevered staircase is the main feature once you enter the front door.

A 150m deep geothermal borehole supplies the heat pump and all the windows and doors are triple-glazed.

Architect Nigel, and Éamon’s brother-in-law Michael O’Mahony, played a key role in working with the couple to maximise the use of the water- and roadside plot occupied by the property. “The house shape is moulded to the site as the front of the house has a curve to follow the road and maximise the available building footprint,” says Éamon.

Michael, a property negotiator of Cork company OM2, manages the luxury home for the family while they are in Australia.

The main challenges posed by the 0.0214-hectare site included “its relatively small, confined aspect”, according to architect Nigel.

“With a small site, there is a temptation to fill every square foot but the goal here was to make the dwelling and its environs feel spacious and light-filled within the restricted site. 

“The build was set to the front of the site as it was essential that light would flow around the property and every opportunity taken to infuse light into the rooms to offset the large elevated stone wall at the rear.”

The first-floor back outdoor living/dining space.

The house was flipped so that the open-plan living/dining area was on the top floor with a large window overlooking the harbour, says the architect. “It allowed for the views while maximising the natural light. It also afforded privacy being elevated above the busy road,” he adds.

“A balcony was factored in to allow outdoor living which is successfully shielded from the neighbours to the west.

“The bedrooms were located on the ground floor allowing for smaller windows to the front with more privacy and noise reduction. A cut-out passage under the first floor is fronted by a garage door which allows vehicle access and parking.”

With an address at World’s End, the house is a five-minute stroll from Kinsale and is close to the Old Head of Kinsale as well as Charles Fort.

The scenery and ever-changing light are as much part of this house as anything else because of the sheer amount of glass.

Floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding glass doors to the balcony on the upper floor enhance the multidimensional feel day and night.

Floating walls add to the sense of spaciousness.

The sliding glass doors open onto the balcony, off the kitchen, complete with table and chairs and overlooking Kinsale Harbour.

The kitchen and living area makes the most of the panoramic ocean vista day and night. “Colette and I created the interior design based on our taste and having the open-plan aspect is very much inspired by Australian beach-house style,” says Éamon who has a background in civil engineering and construction and whose father was a builder.

The living area where the furniture and pictures show an Australian influence.

“Much of the interior furnishings we planned and purchased online and luckily BoConcept www.boconcept.com have an outlet in Sydney we could use to try out furnishings before buying locally from their Dublin outlet and we used some pictures from our local beach at Coogee in Sydney.” 

A floating birch-ply panelled ceiling also gives a wonderfully airy feel to the upper floor living area, as do the cantilevered stairs that tempt you upwards are soon as you step inside the front door.

The open-plan kitchen/dining area.

Not only does the balcony take in that sweeping harbour view, but out back is both an upper-floor dining and chillout area and a roomy ground-floor courtyard, complete with barbecue.

And back inside — because really, this is a house that does not split exterior from interior — absolutely every aspect of the design is considered, down to the leather-themed handles on the chests of drawers in the three bedrooms.

The leather lends a touch of a nautical theme that continues in the kitchen, with leather seating in the plentiful chairs around the kitchen table and at the breakfast counter.

There are just a few perfectly chosen ornaments lining the stairwell and one of these fixes me with a stare as I climb the final step. A little wooden seal. Michael tells me its resident real-life compadre makes an appearance in the harbour across the road most afternoons.

Of course, Kinsale is a gourmet capital and while The Dockhouse’s kitchen looks sleek and spartan, behind those gleaming black cupboard doors lie all you need to cook up a storm — from a Kenwood mixer to Le Creuset ware.

A Nespresso machine sits on the counter awaiting instruction, opposite, in the living space, an Imola swivel chair is perfectly placed so you can sit and sip your latte while drinking in the scenery.

Beautifully pared-back, yet opulent, The Dockhouse is a modern sybarite’s fantasy.

• www.instagram.com/the_dockhouse