50-year-old US-style timber frame Cork home includes three storey 3,000 sq ft garage

Sat, 28 Mar, 2020 - 15:30

Tommy Barker

Ballinderry House may have a claim to fame as one of the first timber-frame homes built in Cork but offers so much more writes Tommy Barker

This large family home called Ballinderry House has a claim to fame of sorts — it’s possibly one of the first-ever timber-frame homes built in Cork. And, it’s now a half a century old, is solid as ever, warm, comfortable — and capacious.

Ballinderry (it’s also spelled Ballinderrig) runs to as much as 5,000 sq ft, over three levels, with six bedrooms, five bathrooms (two for guests) and lots of airy living space, which includes a library, and a house-sized detached garage which is also over three levels.

Sounds quite American? Got it in one, in a way.

While the family who’ve been here, since 1970, the O’Connors, are Irish, the builder they selected to build their home had returned from a spell in the US, when he got used to building timber-frame (or ‘stick built’, as used to be said there) and brought his expertise back with him to Irish shores.

He built big, as was the US wont, and he did a quality job. It’s now for sale, and selling agent John Coleman of Coleman Properties (who himself has enormous building and development expertise) says “it’s a great job, a lovely warm home, and one of the oldest, if not the oldest, timber-frame house in Cork”, and he adds that over the years “it has been renovated to a very high standard and it is in excellent condition”.

Heck, even its garage is a sort of stand-out affair, a whopper of a triple garage, with three up and over doors, and is on three floors, stepped into a slope in the site. One’s up above the parking level, and there’s another below, with three set of French doors out to the grounds.

Those same grounds expand to 1.25 acres, with all the benefit of decades of planting, landscaping, and so now it comes with a flowing water feature corralled into stone-fringed runs, stone over-bridge, along with terraces, barbecue area, a kitchen garden, as well as bit of a parking apron, plus of course that enormous garage for more precious or delicate vehicles.

At about 3,000 sq ft in its own right, it’s ideal for a home industry (home office is too small a concept), upgrading to self-contained apartment (subject to planning), or for collectors of things like cars, boats, bikes … with space left over for a workshop or two.

The setting is accessible, even if it’s not seen or appreciated by the thousands who pass by, generally unwittingly, on a daily basis.

Back when first built close to the original period Dunkettle House (or Dunkathel) just east of Glanmire in its ’70s heyday, now it’s as likely to be identified as being alongside the M8/Glanmire bypass. It’s tucked into a crook by a flyover bridge as the road rises up from the Dunkettle Roundabout en route towards Fermoy and onwards to Dublin, and all points between.

Mature trees visually screen Ballinderry House and the motorway, while also screening and giving huge security is a short cul-de-sac access road and a 3.5m high stone boundary wall, facing the road from the modern Gaelscoil Uí Drisceoil towards Ballinglanna, and Glanmire.

It shares this setting with just two or three other detached family homes; then, next along is the imposing access point for the period Dunkettle House itself and its grounds, acquired in the early 2000s by O’Flynn Construction, still awaiting development once the Dunkettle Interchange is upgraded.

So, yes, Cork’s early timber-frame outlier Ballinderry House has seen many’s the change in the past half century, and is well enough placed to see more in decades to come and in new ownership.

Auctioneer John Coleman guides the immaculate, and abundantly proportioned family home, done in a Georgian style (and with interiors to match) at €920,000, and says at that he reckons it’s very well-priced in the circumstances.

Balustered steps lead up to the front door, and entry hall, within’s a large living room, dining room, play room, den/library with stove set in a brick chimney breast. There’s also a formal drawing room, good for entertaining, while the kitchen’s homely, modern country style writ large, with large gas range/double oven, chunky timber beamed feature, and has a pale, tiled floor and a gas stove.

Then, there’s a separate utility, two guest WCs, and three bathrooms, two with baths: one’s a very large room with corner bath, and all six bedrooms are doubles.

John Coleman adds that Ballinderry is private, secure with electric buzzer access gate, CCTV, etc, and in quite the old world setting, on its own engaging and landscaped grounds … even as the world whizzes past.

Price wise, it’s towards the upperend of the market for Glanmire and Glounthuane (or, almost anywhereelse in Cork, to be honest,) yet thePrice Register records a few local 2019 sales at places like the Hermitage,Sallybrook, Glanmire at €805,000and €850,00.

The period Glanmire Rectory, up by Ballinglanna, shows at €1.55m, but that only reflects it’s value on an acre: with all its grounds, the Georgian brick-faced property sold for €2.3m, making it greater Cork’s strongest sale of ’19, with nursing home development planned by specialist buyers Aparee.

VERDICT: A fine, family minded home for 50 years, ready to move again with the times.