Bigging it up in Ballygarvan, a €750,000 family home with some salvage you might recognise

Not too many homes can accommodate an indoor trampoline or host a whole rugby team, but this one can 

Upper Ballygarvan

Upper Ballygarvan, Cork
€750,000
Size	365 sq m (3,950 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	4
BER	D1

FIVE generations of family background in construction and carpentry came in handy when it came time to convert old stone buildings from farm and barn uses,  to become a private family home just a few miles south Cork city.

Set in Upper Ballygarvan, this home was worked on and transformed over the past two decades. Even that 20 years post-transformation span is but a fraction of the original structure’s age, as it was part of the 1820s-built Regency style Ballygarvan House which is just visible, over the back boundary wall, less than 50 metres off the Cork/airport road towards Kinsale.

The work was taken on by a couple with a then-young family, Mary Attridge, from Cork city, and Fergus O’Donoghue, and the latter brought all of his building and carpentry skills (plus some of his forebears tools,) to bear in rebuilding, extending and reimagining old barn and outhouse structures to fashion a comfortable home, of almost 4,000 sq ft.

Now all done, it’s hard to tell the difference between what’s old, what’s new, what’s salvaged and what’s repurposed.

Along the way, it became a fun family home with enough space for a trampoline to be kept indoors, in the high-ceilinged barn end, with overhead gym/play room/den home office and dance DJ booth.

That impressive room alone is about 500 sq ft at ground, about 20’ by 25’, with stairs to the overhead mezzanine, facing a very substantial chimney breast and chimney with enormous wood-burning stove.

On the other side of this big party room, with external access only, is a large workshop with bathroom, capable of being upgraded to self-contained unit and then, beyond the barn is, well, a whole other house, described by auctioneer Johnny O’flynn of Sherry FitzGerald as the “day-to-day living quarters.” 

A central hallway, double height by the stairwell with its feature full-height window,  opens to a large yet cosy kitchen/dining room with enormous dining table and handy big pantry, and beyond again is a substantial sunroom, facing west, glazed on three sides, with three overhead Veluxes.

Kitchen dining

Sunroom

Then, rounding out the ground floor is the home's main living/reception room, triple aspect with big fireplace and feature brick wall, with arched double doors to the kitchen.

Living room

Vast swathes of the expansive home feel like they’ve been around for generations, and in a way they have been: it's just that they've not been 'here' for all that long.

Fergus, it transpires, has a magpie instinct for old and interesting timbers, beams, brick, stone, 1930s era glass blocks, and a whole host more.

With great recall he details the provenance of masses of mixed materials, most of which he got when doing commercial property makeovers in the city centre via his then trading company FODO Construction (he’s now downed the heavier tools and is a woodwork teacher in Scoil Stiofáin Naofa.)

Thus, the kitchen’s large old oak floorboards came from the old Huguenot Restaurant in the French Quarter.

Kitchen

 Other timber came from Brennans Cookware shop on Oliver Plunkett Street on Oliver Plunkett (now about to be worked on again by new owner Benny McCabe) and brick and beams came from the likes of jobs at Murphys Brewery and at Beamish & Crawford for a bit of stout ecumenism.

Individual bars, when altered, also yielded materials, from the likes of the Evergreen Bar, Elroys/Westimers, and other hospitality venues like Scoozis and the Ashbourne House east of the city near Glounthaune after it ended its days as a hotel.

“I always got the ones with a challenge,” Fergus observes wryly, but seems unwilling to refuse a challenge either, and had the smarts to know when to co-opt strong arms for assistance.

When literally manhandling huge old beams up to fashion the family’s kitchen/dining room, he drafted in squads from UCC and Dolphin rugby clubs where he did coaching, lightening the mood and the load with pizzas, some diversionary rugby games on video, and a modicum of beers. “But, it was out of season,” he is quick to point out...

The couple put in the hard yards inside and outside, planting lots of trees, including contorted hazelnut trees, and fruit bushes and the 1.1 acre is unexpectedly quite sheltered (given it’s near the top of the airport hill on the way up to the Lios Cross) as good sections of it are enclosed from its days as a walled orchard.

Externally there are lots of seating areas for various times of the day, including decking and by the sunroom, in a far corner under a mature desert wine vine, and there’s even an aviary that once held lots of finches, and could now be a dog enclosure/kennels.

Wildlife and birds are abundant today in the wider grounds (might a sectioned off half of the 1.1 acres yield a house site in time?), and a pond by the circular front drive is appreciated by frogs.

For children to hop around at, there’s the indoor barn (the trampoline is moved out), or outdoor tree platform, a swing set and a tree swing, and old tiles and stone slabs laid down in grid patterns so that they can be used for chess or draughts, and hopscotch.

The sense of fun mixed with function also characterises the interiors and auctioneer Johnny O’Flynn observes that “each room has its own charm with originality not found in modern homes.”

There’s been a lot of attention paid to insulation throughout, effective internally for sound reduction as well as heat retention and Mary says she  could be calling family for a meal from the kitchen but won’t be heard from upstairs where there’s quite a novel, stepped floor layout serving the four/five bedrooms (one en suite) beyond the galleried landing.

The D1 rated property’s got a pressurized water system, the roof is Blue Bangor slate and windows are double-glazed hardwood, while the grounds have been quite extensively planted (this set-up to Ballygarvan House was previous posited as a possible garden centre by previous owners 25 years ago.) 

It’s trade-down time now, and key selling points for new family occupiers will be the space, the quirkiness and the even further scope.

Important too is the location, so close to Ballygarvan village, Five Mile Bridge, and Cork Airport (it’s on one of the flight paths) and Business Park, with easy access to Kinsale, to the harbour area and back to the city.

VERDICT: If the walls could talk, they’d have stories to tell given the selection of salvage given a new home here.