Everyday will have its golden moments at €825,000 Roberts Cove home 

Next door to field of gold, this attractive stone-clad home, with basement games room, is tailor made for family

Ballinvarrig, Robert's Cove

Roberts Cove, Cork
€825,000
Size	388sq m (4,176sq ft)
Bedrooms	4/5
Bathrooms	5
BER	B2

HABITATS — human and animal — are a passion for the couple that built this pretty Roberts Cove home.

While one half of the duo has a zeal for working with bricks and mortar, both are seriously committed to providing safe homes for wild creatures.

Their passions found an outlet in an ongoing project to develop an eco-farm in Nohoval, to where the couple plans to relocate, which is why this attractive stone-clad Ballinvarrig home is now up for grabs.

Nohoval is the husband’s ancestral home, and there’s been a good deal of toing and froing between it and Ballinvarrig as the pair increasingly focuses on farming it organically.

They’ve chalked up little wins for the natural world along the way, acknowledged in a booklet by the Tracton Biodiversity Group — of which they are members.

Writing in the booklet, scientist and conservationist Dara Fitzpatrick references their success in attracting farmland birds back to the land by growing a “sacrificial crop” for wintering birds.

“A visit to the crop in Nohoval in March 2024 saw numbers of yellowhammer not seen in South Cork for a long time,” Fitzpatrick writes.

“This one field had probably attracted yellowhammers from all along the south coast to feed.

“It is a significant boost to their survival in late winter and prepares them for a healthy breeding season in spring. In other words, it’s key to their survival to sustain the population,” he adds.

The Nohoval land the couple are returning to was once two adjoining farms, one being the ancestral home of the husband’s great grandmother (Collins), the other his great grandfather’s farm (Desmond). The neighbours found love in Nohoval Cove and a union was formed. They worked the land for generations.

One of the cliff fields contains the remains of “lazy beds”, a system of parallel trenches and ridges dug out with a láí — the Gaelic word for spade — dating back to the Great Famine era of the 1840s, when “lazy beds” were common on poorer, marginal lands.

When the ancestral lands came up for sale during the pandemic, the husband was drawn back by the beauty and uniqueness of the site, on the coast, with small fields surrounded by stone ditches.

It was an opportunity the couple couldn’t resist — the chance to restore old buildings, but also to enhance and protect biodiversity for future generations at Nohoval Cove eco-farm. They bought it and have been tipping away at it ever since, hence the decision to put this house on the market.

The habitat they are leaving behind is one built by the husband and his dad. A fitter by trade and all-round handyman, the husband even built the driveway gates and the railings that frame the front-of-house steps.

His workshop was the impressively big (1600sq ft) garage out the back of their Ballinvarrig home.

“He started the house in 2008, finished it out in 2012, and we moved in in 2015, so we’ve had 10 great years here, but now we are moving 3km over the road to our other project in Nohoval,” the wife says.

The Roberts Cove home is a timber frame house, clad on three sides with the warm tones of West Cork’s Kealkil stone — also used to clad the front of the garage and the boundary wall.

While the garage (with two roller shutter doors) was the husband’s workshop/man cave, it could also be a home gym or the ultimate storage option for the vintage car enthusiast.

Roberts Cove has a long association with vintage vehicles, including an annual vintage vehicle community fundraiser.

If you think the garage is big, rest assured it’s dwarfed by the house, which measures more than 4,100sq ft.

It might look like a two-storey home, but it has a very large basement, accessible from inside and outside the house.

The kids got great mileage out of it as a games room.

A pool table and darts board helped put down many’s the rainy day.

 There’s also a large utility/plant room and a home office at basement level.

It was a house built with entertaining in mind, hence the roomy, open-plan kitchen-cum-dining-cum-living area, with two ovens and a warming drawer “to keep plates hot for guests” and a full height integrated double door pantry unit.

Countertops are granite, appliances are top-of-the-range, and the island unit has both a granite top and a solid oak breakfast bar.

Lots of windows frame countryside views, of which the most spectacular is the field of gold next door where the wind shakes the barley in early summer.

Out front, the view is of the walled garden of Britfieldstown Estate, the seat of the Roberts clan in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the likely inspiration for the name Roberts Cove.

The beach at Roberts Cove (where there’s a sauna) is just 800m away, and there are other beaches nearby such as Rocky Bay and Nohoval Cove.

Roberts Cove Beach

The harbour town of Kinsale is just a 15km trip.

When building their home, the husband enlisted craftsmen, including Mick McCaffrey whose skilled handiwork is showcased in the beautiful staircase, in the timber surround of the windowsills, in the solid wood internal doors, and in the bespoke bathroom sink pedestals.

The husband built the brick fireplace in the main open-plan area, which is fitted with a wood-burning stove.

 There’s a second stove in a separate living room, and there’s also a lounge on the ground floor — which has underfloor heating throughout.

It was the husband’s idea to build a curved wall in the main bedroom, where there’s a walk-in-wardrobe and en suite.

 A hot press on the landing is also walk-in. The attic is floored and reached via a Stira.

The house is set on half an acre, with gravel drive and lots of lawn.

t’s remarkably easy to maintain compared to the challenges of running a farm: Theirs is a mixed enterprise, mainly in grass, but with a growing focus on vegetables and arable crops, rotated for nitrogen building, as it’s an organic farm.

After growing some older grass varieties, they were heartened to see yellow butterflies “which we learnt were clouded yellows, a rarity, but they’ve been on our farm for the last three summers, to our delight,” the wife says.

They’ve planted lots of native tree species and will host a walk on their Nohoval Cove eco farm during upcoming National Tree Week (March 8-15), led by tree and heritage specialist Ted Cook and co-ordinated by the Tracton Biodiversity Group, the national winners last year of the IBP-sponsored Pride of Place Awards in the Climate Action and Biodiversity category.

While the couple are looking forward to the permanent move to their pet project, they will miss their home of 10 years.

“The living standards will be a lot different in Nohoval,” laughs the woman of the house.

She reckons a family will love the Roberts Cove property. Those invested in sustainability will like that solar panels heat the water and rainwater is harvested. The energy rating is a sound B2.

“A family would have great space and comfort in this house,” the owner says.

Selling agents John Corbett and Malcolm Tyrrell, of Cohalan Downing, say “the best of the best” went into the property”.

Guiding at €825,000, they expect interest from families trading up “or people returning from overseas, as well as buyers who want to be near the sea”. Carrigaline is just 11km away. Cork Airport is a half hour spin.

VERDICT: No expense spared at this high quality, well-finished property. Basement level offers lots of options, as does the very generous garage. The field of gold next door comes free of charge.