Timberland chief puts €895k home with customised putting green on market
Sonas, in Ovens, next to the Lee Valley Golf Club
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Ovens, Co Cork |
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€895,000 |
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Size |
348 sq m (3745 sq ft) |
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Bedrooms |
5 |
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Bathrooms |
5 |
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BER |
B1 |
A HOME steeped in sweet spots, Sonas in Ovens is awash with household names, with another in the making, if the young upcoming golfer who lives there continues to ace his game.
He’s already on the move to Davidson College in North Carolina, on a four-year sports’ scholarship. His brothers are excellent golfers too. Living over the hedge from Lee Valley (LV) Golf Club has clearly paid dividends.
It was a deliberative move by their parents who spotted their talent early and bought a site near the golf club on which to build their home.
They even installed a putting green in the garden with the same “stimp” rating as the greens in the Lee Valley, which in simple terms is a measurement of the speed at which the golf ball travels across the green.
Their dad makes a comparison with golf’s most-famous holes at Augusta’s Amen Corner, when describing the lengths they went to to create the perfect practice contours. About €20,000 was invested in installing the artificial bespoke green, a job carried out five or six years ago by landscaping specialists Contour Greens.
It looks like all that dedication is paying off now as one son — with a cabinet full of trophies — heads to the US to further hone his game, while a younger brother is also displaying considerable talent.
Drive, if you’ll excuse the pun, is something this family is not short of, as the father holds the Timberland franchise for the whole of Ireland, including wholesale, retail, and online. He also has the retail franchise in Ireland for outdoor clothing specialists The North Face, as well as trendy footwear brand Vans — hence, all those household names.
His interest in clothing may help explain why he gets such a kick out of the very large laundry room at the heart of their home, which operates at an almost industrial level, with rails of ironed clothes — mainly golfing apparel — ready to go at a moment’s notice.
This, his wife is happy to concede, is her husband’s territory, from putting on washes, to ironing, to hanging up garments in shop-like display order, so that everyone knows exactly where to find what it is they want to wear on any given day.
His wife’s interest meanwhile, is in creativity and art and much of her talented handiwork is on display around their almost 4,000 sq ft home, including a still-life in one of her son’s bedrooms of those classic yellow nubuck Timberland work boots, popularised by hip hop legends, notably Canadian artist Drake. She didn’t lick her talent off a stone — her late father was the talented artist John D Horgan.
The woman of the house has plenty of scope for brushwork in her home, as she has an upstairs studio that opens onto a side balcony (with useful outdoor sockets).
It’s one of two balconies off the first floor.
“It’s an absolutely fabulous place to work, it’s so bright, flooded with natural light,” she says.
Her husband has a desk there too, for the days he works from home. He says they have the sun all day on the balcony, and the views are terrific — green fields stretching towards distant mountains. The next owners of Sonas might decide to use the studio/home office as an upstairs sitting room, or it could be another bedroom.
Each of the three boys has their own spacious double bedroom – there’s enough room in one for a drum kit, keyboard, IT equipment, and a couch, as well as the bed.
While the boys’ rooms don’t have ensuites, an upstairs shower was installed in a separate shower room, next to the main bathroom, which was a sensible move. The same decision was taken in the main bedroom, with the rainhead shower kept separate from the rest of the ensuite.
The main bedroom, with walk-in-wardrobe/dressing room/ensuite/separate shoe storage (all those Vans and Timberlands) is the real star though, because it leads to the second balcony — “the most-used balcony in the house”, where the woman of the house has a strategically placed egg chair.
It’s the perfect sunshine spot, south-facing, overlooking a huge semi-circular front lawn, where Larry the robotic Lawnmower is mercilessly shearing anything over a centimetre, proving that Gillette doesn’t have an exclusive on the best a man can get.
“It’s a brilliant yoke, the best thing ever,” says the man of the house, and for sure it knows what it’s doing. The lawn is like a carpet, even when the family is away on holiday, because Larry’s artificial intelligence makes him really very smart.
Larry certainly earns his living on this one-acre site, which is splendidly private thanks to very tall trees — lots of oaks — along the roadside. The only unwelcome visitors are the occasional golf balls, mis-hit by someone on their way to the 17th hole at Lee Valley.
The family’s favourite part of the garden is near the putting green, where they have their barbecues, at the other side of the curvy, beautifully planted drive.
It overlooks a nursery of sorts in the form of a commercial apple orchard and commercial planting of Christmas trees — which significantly reduces the prospect of anyone else building close to the rear of their home anytime soon.
Their home, designed by the darling eco-architect of West Cork, Tony Cohu, was built in 2006 and it replaced “a standard dormer”.
It was “a huge job” they say, and the size of the house was almost doubled, from 2,000 sq ft to 3,700 sq ft, which doesn’t include the two very generous balconies.
There’s some lovely feature slatework at the upper level of this two-storey home, where many of the windows are extra big, showcasing the gardens. A king-size picture window halfway up the bespoke Ballingeary Joinery staircase gives stunning views to the rear.
Downstairs, the clever use of pocket doors means rooms can be closed off or opened up, giving a view right through the entire length of the house, from the open-plan kitchen diner at one end, to the games room with sliding door to the front garden at the other end, with a couple of hallways in between.
All of the main reception rooms are to the front of the house to maximise natural light.
The triple-aspect kitchen diner, which spans the depth of the house, is a huge, bright room, with double doors to a patio at the south-facing side, and adjoining it is one of two TV rooms, with a large, multi-fuel stove that heats the radiators.
Solar panels on the roof heat the water and central heating is oil fired.
There’s another reception room at the other side of a hallway with smashing custom-made built-in bookshelves either side of an open fireplace and beyond that, across another hallway, is the games room (originally the art studio), with a painted concrete floor.
Behind the games room is the guest bedroom and a shower room. Also to the rear, behind a corridor, is the laundry room and another bathroom. There’s a walk-in pantry too. The flow of rooms is excellent, thanks to a carefully considered layout in a house designed to seamlessly combine style with practicality.
The family has wrung a good 15 years from their superb home and from neighbouring Lee Valley Golf Club, but their requirements are changing as the kids grow up.
With one due to move abroad, another in university and a third in school in the city, they are relocating to suit their needs.
Norma Healy of Sherry FitzGerald is selling Sonas — the Irish for “happiness” — and she says it’s “an excellent family home, on a meticulously landscaped site, located in a great community”.
Moreover, you can enjoy the peace and tranquility of countryside living, while being just minutes from the Ballincollig bypass, “making it incredibly convenient to Ballincollig, Bishopstown and Cork City (14km)”, she adds. Macroom is 24km away.
Of the property itself, she says: “It’s clear that effort and money have been invested in creating such a comfortable, practical, and stylish family home, which has been finished to an exquisite level inside and out”.
Ms Healy, who is guiding Sonas at €895,000, points out that the area is amenity rich, with Farran Woods, the National Rowing Centre (also in Farran Woods) and of course the Lee Valley Golf Club “on your doorstep”.
: No danger of this home not making the cut. You’ll be happy as Larry in Sonas, where house and gardens are well above par.
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