Don't hold your horses for €585,000 Clare home with pony pedigree

Jump to it if you want a fine, well laid-out family home with great internal floor plan and 4.4 part-landscaped acres, plus an option to buy stables too on an extra 1.2 acres

Curves in all the right places: Springfield House  is on 4.4 acres near Quin and Ennis in Co Clare, with an option of a further 1.2 acres with substantial stables

Quin, Co Clare
€585,000
Size	307 sq m (3,385 sq ft)
Bedrooms	6
Bathrooms	6
BER	C1

IT was second time lucky when it came to homebuilding for the family at Quin, Co Clare’s Springfield House — they moved out to build beside stables, for a pony-obsessed healthy and active lifestyle.

Springfield House was built in 1996

Love of horses and ponies spans a few generations of the Stafford clan, admits top rider Mary Stafford (nee Hannon), who along with her siblings competed nationally in show jumping in their youth, even winning a trophy at the RDS, presented to her by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.

The love of ponies carried on to her own three children, and after she and her husband Pat built stables on land near Quin and Clooney 6km from Ennis, they found their own children were always saying “we’re just going down the road” and they’d be off riding for hours.

So the family saddled up and followed in the ponies’ and horses’ hoofprints.

Stables on paddock fenced 1.2 acres extra

They sold a first home they’d built,architect-designed on landscaped ground with a tennis court, and used that building experience to go again here, in the mid 1990s, with the input of a very conscientious builder Pat Cloran. They ended up with an elegant, period-era design-inspired 3,285 sq ft family home on 4.4 acres, putting in six bedrooms, most en suite, bringing in two original period house fireplaces, one from Wexford, one from Ennis, getting the property’s site orientation just right for all-day sun and light in the right rooms at the right time of day, plus patios and terraces.

Well  landscaped, on 4,4 acres with significant road frontage

It’s all all on 4.4 acres which they extensively landscaped, with what have matured into secret garden sections with curving almost-maze-like hedges, loved as much now by grandchildren as by the Stafford family in their own younger days.

Hall sets the right tone

Grandchildren play netball, basketball, and any other ball games here, and the 4.4 acres is next to the original stable block that proved such a lure in the early 1990s. That’s on a further 1.2 acres which can be bought along with
Springfield House if new owners wish.

 It’s a new, summer listing with Ennis agent Diarmuid McMahon of Sherry FitzGerald who guides the immaculate and spacious family home with its particularly good floor plan, with extensive road frontage, and privacy, at €585,000. The quite substantial stables on the 1.2 acres, with paddock fencing and further frontage, is separately guided at €125,000.

The maturity of the deciduous trees lends the property lots of privacy, and other planting skirting the house includes laurel hedges, myriad heathers, rockery, a pergola, acers, shrubs and flower beds, some retained by banks of old railways sleepers.

Sit-out areas are thoughtfully placed for various times of the day, and even more secure is a pet/dog run and kennel sheltered by one external wall of the house, while there’s also some lean-to covered sections for timber storage, clothes drying etc.

Drawing room

Internally it’s elegant, yet shy of being formal and agent Diarmuid McMahon describes it as " tastefully finished in a country style," with three living rooms, two with period fireplaces, one with a stove, while a further stove is set in a brick arch in a more relaxed family space by the dining room.

There’s also a quite modest-sized kitchen with quality oak units topped with granite tops, next to an attached garage, plus laundry, guest WC, and a ground floor sixth bedroom, next to a bathroom.

A curving staircase with hardwood handrail leads to a landing with five bedrooms off, with five en suites, one of which is ‘Jack and Jill’ style along with a large triple aspect additional large room currently used for storage but with scope for a sizeable additional ‘main’ bedroom, it’s suggested. 

Living/dining

Apart from the stoves and one open fire, Springfield House has oil heating and double glazing, with quality hardwood doors and door cases at ground level, with maple used as flooring in the main reception rooms, while all bathrooms are tiled in neutral whites, and so areimmune to going in or out of fashion.

VERDICT: Vendor Mary Stafford grew up, one of seven siblings, in nearby Ardsollus, Co Clare, where the Hannon home was a former 19th century Bianconi carriage stop-off. Her brother still has a stone-carved mantle from it, saying ‘Entertainment here for Man and Horse.’
The very same could be said of Quin’s Springfield House....