Cork's €2.15m Beechmount House is a genuine Georgian gem

Hospitality is order of the day at hoteliers’ private family home

Beechmount House, Innishannon

Innishannon, Cork
€2.15 million
Size	477 sq ft (5,000 sq ft) on 24 acres
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	7
BER	D

It's almost a truism that good hoteliers also own or develop stand-out (but, also, stand-back) private homes for their own families and for their often-rare down times, away from the hospitality treadmill.

A top example this month was the €20m-€30m sale of Strancally Castle on the River Blackwater in Waterford, which had been owned for the past 25 years by members of the Forte family, fourth generation hoteliers of international Rocco Forte renown.

Strancally Castle, County Waterford. Picture: The Irish Times

Strancally was bought off-market in a Munster mega deal by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg for an unconfirmed sum, put loosely at between €20m and €30m, but unconfirmed. Whether or which, it’s loose change in any case for Zuckerberg, whose wealth is put at €160bn, enabling him to buy 6,500 Strancallys, should he so wish. On 44 acres, Strancally has yet to appear on the Price Register, while the same Register shows the highest other Strancally property transaction at an even more paltry €150,000, back in 2021.

In a far more real world (these things increasingly being relative) it’s possibly not a surprise to find this top-class Georgian home called Beechmount House, owned by an Irish hotel industry and business family, gently exuding its own deep sense of hospitality, albeit on a domestic front: it’s a ‘mere’ five-bedroomed, 5,000 sq ft hideaway, in contrast to the owners’ hotel legacy of guest bedrooms by the hundreds around this island.

Set 3km from Innishannon village, near Brinny and on a bus route, Beechmount House has been the savvy, seasoned, and successful hoteliers’ own family retreat for 25 years, a reasonable period of enjoyment and family rearing time (they’ve asked not to be identified by name) for a period property with roots put back to the early 1800s, and links to major local landowners of the day with at least 800 acres.

In fact, bounteous and beautiful Beechmont House is one of three linked homes of the early 19th century in this backroad vicinity, including Garryhankard and Rockfort (Highfort?) and associated with the Hornibrook family who acquired Garryhankard from the Rev Somers Payne, as well as others such as Biggs and the substantial Nash estate outside Cork’s Innishannon.

The three homes, all linked to Hornibrooks for various long periods, were each substantial, all relatively close to one another yet each out of sight of the next, and possibly to save family circumstance and odious size comparisons.

Avoiding comparisons is possibly even more relevant now that one, Garryhankard, had swollen to 17,000 sq ft, on 40 acres, with stud farm, 26 stables, putting green, lake and indoor swimming pool by 2013 when it was sold by the family of the late Cork solicitors and property developer James G O’Mahony.

The Price Register shows Garryhankard House selling by 2016 for €1.86m, with a further €200,000 paid for a lodge, and the overall sum is likely to have been closer to the €2.8m AMV at the time, reduced from an earlier ask of €4.5 m.

Also showing on the Price Register is the far more compact Rockfort House, Innishannon, making €900,000 in 2020, while there’s no listing of a Highfort House — which had been leased by the Rev Somer Payne from the Nash family in the mid 1800s.

Today, and sized between those two ends of the scale is the superb and glistening Beechmount House, fresh to market for the first time in a quarter of a century, and almost certainly in the best condition of its almost 200 years standing.

It’s listed with a €2.15m price guide by estate agent Trevor O’Sullivan of Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty (SIR) and rightly packs a whole lot of property punch for any buyers at this sort of level, while still being of a size at 5,000 sq ft that very many families will have no trouble filling and getting the best use out of every room.

Because the vendors have been in the hotel, catering and other hospitality sectors, which also involved construction and development, it’s a fair bet that any work done here has been done to the highest possible construction and aesthetic standards: this includes the main Georgian house, the curtilage with magnificent planting, from swathes of pink roses to white mop headed hydrangeas, tree ferns and clipped box hedging and standard box, conservation and conversion of courtyard buildings, and back-up farm services, if needed, while the grounds and approach avenue with centuries old beech trees set an immediate tone of ‘having arrived.’

Clearly, money wasn’t spared over the past 25 years in curating the original five-bay home.

Matching the 19th century-added front porch with superb fanlight with delicate tracery and arched side panels is the west-gable conservatory, installed a decade or so ago and supplied by leading UK firm Hamptons who — among their circa 1,000 builds over a 40-year span — did a wrap-around conservatory on the River Thames for Gordon Ramsey’s Bread Street Kitchen on the River in London. Cost? Likely €100,000 for this add-on alone at the time…

More locally, a craftsman Thomas Canniffe returned all the original, old stone outbuildings to the rear of the house plus glasshouse to operational use, including converting what would have originally been an estate rent cottage, where tenants came to pay their dues, into a private bar/entertainment room, with pool table and outdoor decking for sundowners: “we Irish always win in the end,” quips one of the owners.

That Hamptons conservatory is off to the side of one of the home’s two front reception rooms, a living room with a stone fireplace; across the hall is a dining room, a living room is down the hall to the left, with a kitchen to the right, with high-quality painted Cork Glenline units, plus marble topped island; there’s an Aga, and this L-shaped kitchen then links back to a breakfast room with vaulted ceilings, overhead Veluxes, with a wide wood burning stove and double doors to a very large circular sandstone patio with outdoor seating, all ringed by roses and other mature planting.

At ground too is a home office, two guest WC’s, a boot room and a large utility which also has rear patio access, while the spacious and heavily landscaped courtyard gives access to a range of characterful old outbuildings, one or two with guest cottage/conversion potential, whilst really rooting these buildings/cluster to the house is a graceful old arch to the right, draped in ivy and creepers.

Rounding out the very full provisions features back inside are five first floor en suite bedrooms, two to the front, and three behind over a split front and back landing/half landings, with the most elegant of winding stairs with slender spindles, sinuous mahogany handrail, wall panelling and soft, underfoot carpeting (hotel quality?!) with lovely brass stair-rods.

Dating Beechmount House back to c 1830 and noting its been part of the local ‘big house’ history for nearly two centuries, Lisney SIR’s Trevor O’Sullivan says “this distinguished home combines the elegance and character of a bygone era with the comfort and presentation expected of a modern luxury property".

“Beechmount House exudes a feeling of privacy, prestige and timeless quality, presented in pristine condition throughout with a wealth of original period features giving a sense of scale and grandeur: The overall presentation ensures the property is ready for immediate occupation.”

On its 24 acres, partly wooded, Beechmount House also scores in terms of location, being c 20 minutes from Cork Airport and city, a short spin away via leafy backroads (and passing Garryhankard) from Innishannon village and the N71 West Cork route and routes to Kinsale, while there’s a country bus route (the 239) within a five minute walk from its electric access gates serving Cork city, Crossbarry, Brinny and Bandon.

In terms of quality offers in the broader hinterland west of Cork city, a recent price comparison could be the sale of the immaculate, c 20 year old Georgian style villa, at Knockmacool, Ahiohill, which is understood to have fetched nearly €250k over its May 2026 €1.25m launch AMV.

VERDICT: Hospitality personified indeed, this is the real deal, in more ways than one...