Solid ground in Co Cork

Size: 215 sq m (2,300 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 3

BER: A2

A DEVASTATING earthquake a decade ago on the other side of the world had an indirect result, in the construction of this West Cork house, home to an Irish/New Zealand couple John and Diane Hickey, and their family.

Their home is called Burwood House after Burwood Road and the Burwood district of Christchurch in New Zealand, left largely in ruins after the impact of the 6.3-magnitude earthquake in February 2011.

The enormous tremor, one of the worst ever recorded there, left much of the city in rubble and resulted in 185 deaths.

“We lost our house, and we also lost our community, there was nothing left,” recalls Ballydehob native and carpenter/builder John Hickey of the seismic impacts.

It’s been a slow rebuild for Christchurch since, but there’s been enormous renewal and positive spirit. It’s something he, his Kiwi wife Diana, and three now-young adult children want to return to, after a period living his native Cork which he returned to six years ago, and where they built this distinctive-looking well-sized c 2,300 sq ft rural one-off four years ago.

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“They’re mad keen to go back,” John acknowledges, as the family put Burwood House near Skibbereen on the open market as a fully-finished, sturdily standing entity, and they’ll head back down under, to a Covid-19 quarantining period, when their Irish home is sold.

It’s located at Reenmurragha, 6km from the market town of Skibbereen, and is listed with local estate agent Maeve McCarthy of Charles P McCarthy auctioneers, who attaches a €635,000 AMV to the property, on 1.5 acres.

It’s block-built, and features some quite distinctive-looking glazing, openings, and quite upright box dormers rising from the front wall, done to a design by Bantry engineer Diarmuid McCarthy & Associates — which, John Hickey says, increases the useful space in upstairs bedrooms.

The two-storey house, with stair access to an attic-level finished out for considerable volumes of storage, was built via direct labour and overseen by its owners, thanks to a building background.

It’s set on a levelled-out ‘platform’ of what had been a sloping site, set off a minor public road, with what Maeve McCarthy says is “an idyllic countryside location, with a sublime aspect over the undulating landscape to the coastline in the distance".  

The views are out along the Ilen estuary towards Baltimore and the islands of Roaringwater Bay and, apart from the main two-storey house, Burwood’s other buildings include a 530 sq ft lofted detached garage/workshop with lean-to timber shed with partial see-through roofing.

At some future stage and subject to planning, the self-contained garage/workshop building Layout includes a ground floor bedroom four, guest WC/shower room, kitchen with island and walnut-topped units, pantry, utility, snug, and a main triple-aspect living room with stove. This room, plus the snug, both access a sun terrace, and each has a Velux set in a sloping roof section to the front for extra light.

Up on the first floor, two of the three bedrooms have a double aspect, and two have that extra height clearance in the front, thanks to the box dormer profile. The main bedroom has both an en-suite and a walk-in wardrobe/dressing room.

Apart from the stove, there’s air-to-water central heating in this A2-rated build, with triple-glazed windows, a heat recovery system, PV solar panels, and biocycle on site.

The 1.5 acres has had initial landscaping, now taking hold, with paddock sections set up, and there’s a section just inside the site’s stone boundary walls for additional car/van/camper/boat storage.

VERDICT: Burwood House stands near Skibbereen as a sturdy testament to an Irish/New Zealander family’s West Cork hiatus, bookended at one end by an earthquake, and at the other by a global pandemic.

Skibbereen, West Cork €635,000 Size: 215 sq m (2,300 sq ft) Bedrooms: 4 Bathrooms: 3 BER: A2