Mediterranean calm comes to East €695k Cork home with designer chill

1998-built Ballyrussell home has interior flair, lots of space, and a detached studio with even more scope

Fri, 29 Jul, 2022 - 00:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports

East Cork (near Ballymaloe and Ballycotton)
€695,000
Size	266 sq m (2,850 sq ft) plus 650 sq ft lofted detached studio
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	B3

THERE’S a sort of an anywhere, international-living feel to this country home, with its crisp white walls, honey-hued terracotta tiles underfoot, vibrant art, and warm, interior feel and bespoke joinery.

Split level living, dining, next to kitchen

Crisp white render meets Kerry sandstone at Ballyrussell on 0.9 acre gardens. Note lofted annexe to the rear

However, the views give away the fact that it’s very much in East Cork, built very close to the hundreds of acres of walled estate lands of Ballymaloe House and Shanagarry, also looking over rich tillage land to the coast andbeaches at Garryvoe, Ballycotton island, and its lighthouse.

It’s seaside living lite,proximate, set a few miles inland from the coastline as the gull flies, but the water views are enough to start off with, with the flick and sweep of the lighthouse beams a beacon in more ways than one.

Then, there’s the ocean of
hardwood deck which has hosted marquee-like tents for parties, but is very maritime in feel, while the multi-purpose rear extension wing and garage host gym, other
exercise equipment, and surfboards much used by the younger generation, raised here at the spot called Ballyrussell.

The family that built here back in 1998 had lived and worked overseas, in the UK, Europe, and further afield, were drilled in the visual media and creative arts and brought that sensibility to the
design of this detached home on a rural 0.9-acre sloping plot.

It’s a dormer in its broad nature, probably best described as being “planner friendly” for the day it was approved but, actually, is far more subtly worked inside, with an airy feel, light coming from every quarter, and with both
bedrooms and living areas on both levels, all-in about 2,850 sq ft +, and it feels even bigger too.

The credit for this goes to a good working partnership between the couple (she’s in the hair industry, he’s broadly in visual and marketing media, consulting both at home and overseas) and their architect Kieran McDonogh who is also a landscape architect, and they got this home to sit easily on its 0.9-acre site, sloping, with two entrances off a very quiet and
picturesque back road which leads to Ladysbridge from Cloyne,
skirting the Ballymaloe land bank.

The duo was among the first ‘blow-ins’ to get permission to build here, in the late 1990s, and since then they’ve been joined by a number of other one-offs on
similar-sized sites. As they are above the road, you need to slow the car down when passing to
appreciate the various styles, and this 'white house' is one of the more secretly placed.

With a son now long finished school days, the family is more mobile both for work and pleasure.

Doggone: Enzo the retriever is set to wave goodbye

They are about to trade down and already have a new-buildproject underway near Midleton. They’ve given the sale of their home to agent Adrianna Hegarty of Hegarty Properties, who guides it at €695,00.

Given its style and nature,
finish, setting, and scope, plus a detached, block-built lofted studio workspace with a further 650sq ft and even further scope, might it go well over that sum? Most likely.

It’s well suited to outdoor living in finer weather and the deck is
almost dance-floor sized, at about 1,000sq ft, in hardwood and weathering very well, while the house’s exterior is a mix of white render and Kerry sandstone on the main, apex front gable with French door access between the dining area and the deck.

Ms Hegarty describes it as “a
bespoke, modern family home, with impressive finish” in a scenic rural setting, reckoning she’ll get interest from traders up in and around East Cork, as well as from further afield, including
relocators from overseas who’ll like the fact it’s not all predictable and ‘traditional’ but has thoughtful quirks.

The bespoke element is seen in things such as the beech and spalted beech kitchen, made by Homegrown Kitchens and a highly regarded company that specializes in native Irish hardwoods. It’s a simple beauty, with units topped in slender dark granite, plus there’s an unobtrusive small
central island with wood tops.

Kitchen by Homegrown Kitchens with spalted beech panels

All of the wood is quite the thing of beauty, here and elsewhere, far from standard fittings or flooring, and even the doors have been upgraded in birch ply with spalted beech insets, The owners alsocommissioned Homegrown to make their dining table and chairs, very solidly crafted in native woods with eight upright backed seats, all snugly fitting for anensemble.

Whoever comes to buy eventually, if they like this near-matching soulmates dining seating set-up off the kitchen, will have the
option to buy. The departing
vendors are prepared to sell select furniture that so suits this home.

Habitues of East Cork and
various Shanagarry and Ballycotton haunts might recognize a few distinct looks, such as the unfussed joinery, white walls, and warm chunky terracotta floor tiles, sourced from Spain.

Warm terracotta tiles and 'Homegrown' table and chairs, which can be sold with the house

It’s sort of a Stephen Pearce aesthetic (no relation to the vendors, though) that crops up in various East Cork properties, both domestic andcommercial — a design influencer of his day, even if the dreaded term is a more recent arrival to the world of interiors.

Also of note is the attention paid to lighting, with an array of eye-catching light fittings from avariety of sources, pendant,suspended, wall-mounted, and free-standing, including a fun one that the owners made themselves in a red, laced, almost corset-like covered champagne bottle from their nuptials. Other fittings came from the likes of Mimo, much-missed furniture and design shop in Cork in the 2000s run byGerman couple Michael Haberbosch and Monica Hary (hence the abbreviated trading name Mimo).

This is a home with two ‘hearts’; it’s got that capacious ground floor living/dining/kitchen, light-flooded thanks to double aspect, with a nice mix of window shapes and double doors, and is split level here, with a dividing chimney breast holding a wood-burning stove as a heat-sink on one side.

The back of the chimney breast,

facing the kitchen, has a hollowed-outsection for displaying art, a ceramics piece right now, and the roll-call of creators and painters is quite the gallery list ofcontemporary ‘names’ — plus a few one-offs done by the owners themselves, of equalimpact and quality.

They placed a second living area up at the first-floor level, a quieter ‘withdrawing’ room, again double aspect, and it has some of the best views down towards Ballycotton a few miles to the south-west, while trees growing across the road are only now
starting to eat into the wider ocean vista. Some of it will surely reassert when leaves fall in the next few months.

Each level has two bedrooms also, and the master (en-suite, with dressing room) has very clever pull-out storage solutions set into deep side eaves, over an extension added to the back of the home some years ago, again in top-quality joinery.

Apart from the main house section, the
recently-added back lean-to extension
provides a multipurpose home cinema, games/gym/party room, with shower for post-games, road-running, and beach days, and it links handily to an integrated garage for storage and seas.

The standalone annex, lofted and used as a workspace and studio, meanwhile, could be upgraded slightly for guest use, Airbnb, or double-level home office, and its on-high gable wall of glass is just short of an opening door and a balcony for Ballycotton views. It’s a racing certainty that new occupants will want consider just this add-on feature…

Upper deck: first-floor 'withdrawing' room with window shutters

There’s no sign of corners being cutanywhere here (even if some rooms are off-centre and refreshingly non-rectangular in shape), and the lateral thinking that’s gone into its architect-assisted design is seen also in ideas such as an internal glaze wallupstairs between the landing and the living rooms. Neat and bright, in more ways than one.

“We wanted a bright and un-fussed
Mediterranean sort of character inside and outside,” says one of the owners of the house.

Aided and abetted by the many windows, white walls, sand and cement plaster — even the ceramic birdboxes on side walls for sparrows and swallows, and the rough-rendered low walls by the garden step to a lower car-parking area give a migratory holiday-away feel to this full-time East Cork near-coastal home.

Main bedroom with pull-out storage units in the eaves

Beaches nearby include Ardnahinch,
Ballynamona, and Ballybrannigan, and Midleton and the rail line and Cork harbour are about a 15-minute drive away…if you have to leave.

VERDICT: A lot more going on here that is pleasing to the eye than a cursory glance might suggest.