Cottage gem next to Michael Flatley’s Cork estate for €350k

The well-worn description of a house as being “chocolate-box pretty” must mystify a younger generation when the only chocolate boxes they’ve seen are plain, austere ones with maybe some gold writing and a scant ribbon for decoration. Once, though, chocolates came in boxes that featured pretty scenes – typically dreamy, rose-covered stone cottages, country settings that looked wistfully charming when sitting on a suburban coffee table.

East Lodge, at Castlehyde, in Fermoy, with its Tudor-style diamond windows, pretty dormers and bow front, is chocolate-box pretty – but also important enough to be listed on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.

“The garden is as important as the house,” says Jeremy Wales, who together with his four siblings is selling East Lodge. “In May, the wisteria on the front is in bloom, there’s a rose garden to the side and an orchard with pear, apple and walnut trees.”

Family home

Their mother, Elizabeth, loved visiting Italian gardens and took inspiration from them back to Fermoy from her frequent trips, which explains the formal, smartly clipped boxed hedging to the front. Widowed in her 40s and living in Waterford, she moved back to east Cork where she was from, with her five children, to be closer to family and friends, buying East Lodge and remaining there for the rest of her life.

“It’s a comfortable, well-proportioned family home,” says Jeremy, an architect now living in Dublin, whose memories of the house are filled with childhood games in the beech forest on the fringes of the garden – replicated in later years by the siblings’ own children – family Christmases in the magically decorated house, and later weekends enjoying the peaceful surrounding and helping out with the garden.

Built in 1830, this was originally a gate lodge – to the Castlehyde estate, now long broken up, with the house owned by Michael Flatley – being larger than most at 177.4sq m (1,910sq ft) and two-storey.

Interior features

Houses of this period tend to be calmingly symmetrical in layout and upstairs there are three double bedrooms and a large family bathroom, which could possibly be divided to make an en suite for one of the bedrooms. Downstairs on one side of the hall is a comfortable living room and a separate study; on the other a dining room opening into the kitchen. The many original interior features include working window shutters, a testament to the original craftsmen.

The secluded property on three-quarters of an acre is west-facing and Elizabeth created a lovely sheltered seating area for eating outdoors. “The stone retains the heat,” says Jeremy, “so in summer you can sit out for hours, well into the evening.”

The decision to sell East Lodge after their mother’s death wasn’t easy he says. It could have become a holiday home for the family but leaving it lying vacant for so much of the year didn’t sit well with the siblings. “It deserves better than that,” says Jeremy. “It’s a lovely family home and should be lived in.”

East Lodge, Castlehyde, is for sale through Paul O’Driscoll Auctioneer, asking €350,000.