It's the berries: €2m  Rathcooney farm is ripe for the picking

Generations of Corkonians will recall childhood early morning starts picking strawberries at Newenhman family's fruit and veg farm

Pick your own ....for €2m. Fruit pickers at Rathcooney fruit farm in the 1950s. Cream of the crop with agents Cohalan Downing

Rathcooney, Cork
Size:	248 sq m (2,670 sq ft) on 40 acres
Price	€2 million
Bedrooms:	5
Bathrooms:	2
BER:	E1

THE early bird catches the worm, and the berries — but who’ll be the canny bird to get their beak and claws on Parklands House, a spot known only distantly now to generations of reluctant early risers on the fringes above Cork city.

Parklands is on 40 acres

Owned by the Newenham family of farmers for nigh on three-quarters of a century, the period family home Parklands House, its land, woodland and laurel walk, as well as old stone outbuildings and farm production buildings plus former mushroom tunnels is now for sale, up for the picking, as it were.

Simple Georgian grace

Owner Robin Newenham, along with his wife Meg is second generation here, but has far deeper roots in Cork soil: his family background is via Coolmore House near Carrigaline (now sadly unlived in), with the Newenham family also having estates at Firmount, Donaghmore among other settings.

Make an entrence

A family tree proudly on display on an upstairs landing, in two detailed sections, traces Newenham family lineage back 1,000 years and many are still involved in business and farming:

Robin says he has a WhatsApp group with 20 or so cousins “and we are close as glue.”

Stone outbuildings

But, Robin and Meg are uprooting from Parklands House and its long-productive fields, the origin ‘farm to fork’ locus for summer strawberries and other soft fruits, broccoli (calabrese back in Robin’s day) and mushrooms, lots and lots of mushrooms. At its prime Rathcooney was one of the country’s largest bag growers.

The berries

Robin can wax lyrical about mushroom production and output, bag growing vs tunnel growing (in dark 120’ long tunnels), home-made compost, feeding, harvesting and selling (via shops and wholesalers like Southern Fruit, Jamaica Banana and Dales) by the ton, packing and, most vitally getting seasonal produce on shop shelves as fast as humanly (and eh, childlishly?) possible.

Land aplenty

Robin recalls employing workers from Latvia, before EEC membership in the 1970s, and the days when squadrons of children (some barely double digits in age it might appear now from archive photos!) He had 220 young pairs of hands-on, low-to-the-ground, crack of dawn pickers one scorcher summer, in 1972, he recalls, with peak weeks being in June and July.

Slugs, birds and some of his pickers literally ate into the crops’ margins, Robin quips, and a perk for some was being able to use the simple unheated outdoor swimming pool in front of the house afterwards, even if its real genesis was as a water reservoir for the crops.

And, as an example of horticultural apartheid of the day, while strawberry pickers were allowed the odd dip in the pool, it was strictly out of bounds for the filthier mushroom pickers!

All in the past now, water under the bridge and fingernails…

Deciding to sell up, to simplify life, and see grandchildren more, the Newenhams have charged agents Malcolm Tyrrell and Jackie Cohalan of Cohalan Downing with the sale of Parklands House.

It’s quite the charming period home, unostentatious yet comfortable with a lovely old world kitchen with Aga, with the patina of age and wear and care and some very attractive features, such as ornate, coloured glass window on the stairwell.

It has three reception rooms, central hall, five bedrooms and scope to be added on to on to the side or back, with kitchen garden, pond, lush and verdant grounds near the house with a laurel walk and scented shrubs, mature hardwoods, lofted stone outbuildings, yard and other production buildings, all accessed off a long approach avenue (to be shared with a family owned bungalow on a section), all set close to the cemetery and Old Christians RFC ground, with views down the valley to the east towards Glanmire.

Double aspect bedroom

Agents Cohalan Downing guide at €2m and invite those seeking an easily managed country home with land and privacy on the edge of the city to “step back in time, with his magnificent Georgian period house, built in 1865, with a rich and fascinating history.”

Apart from the fruit farm links of late, they note it was once owned by a James Morrogh, prominent in Irish politics and society, “who counts former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson as a direct descendant.With ample space for entertaining guests or simply relaxing with family, the house is the perfect place to create memories that will last a lifetime,” they say of the hospitable home, with its abundant and productive acres.

Kitchen with Aga

Indeed, hospitality was shown when the Irish Examiner visited: a fresh sponge cake, with cream and strawberries, was produced out of the Aga along with good coffee.

“Are the strawberries your own? we asked, rather obviously.

“Of course they are. I paid for them,” came Robin’s reply.

VERDICT: The berries.