Blessed West Cork setting for born again Georgian era glebe house in great nick

Irish Examiner

18-07-2025

WEST Cork's Rathclaren House is as good as old — the supremely comfortable former Georgian rectory was effectively rebuilt from the roof down, and from its dug-up floor upwards, when it last changed hands, in jig-time, in 2008.
Gorgeous Georgian glebe on five acres of groomed and green grounds
Apart from its walls, just about everything within is new, and high end, but its aesthetic and the quality of its workmanship is 100% faithful to its past, leaving confusion only as to whether the 1820s rooted home is as good as new, better than new, or as good as it gets for an veteran coastal home with deep local roots.
Despite being over 200 years in age and built to a template common at the time for 19th-century rectories and glebe houses, Rathclaren is not the oldest kid on its block: that honour belongs to its next door neighbour, the Anglican Holy Trinity Church, with portions going back to the 1650s (even earlier ruins of a church nearby date to the 13th century). Holy Trinity, or Rathclaren Church, was added to and altered several times in the 1800s, including a tower with clock and a so-called lychgate covered entrance — quintessentially English, also seen in Scandinavia, rarely in Ireland.
Lychgate at Holy Trinity church. Picture Dan Linehan
With its adjacent church, graveyard, and cemetery holding the remains of both Catholics and Protestants and its lychgate, the Rathclaren ensemble is picture postcard pretty, just a few hundred metres uphill from the coastal road (and, Wild Atlantic Way) running west of Kinsale towards Clonakilty, between Ballinspittle and Timoleague near Burren and Kilbrittain.
Old bones, updated inside
It's in good company with a handful of other period homes in the vicinity, including the early 1800s Georgian villa Gortaglenna, and the late 1700s Burren House, while nearby on the coastline is Coolmain Castle, currently for sale for the Disney family with a €7.5m AMV on 56 acres of 'Disney-land', in immaculate order.
Rathclaren House is near Disney's Coolamain Castle
Coolmain went to the international market in April with joint agents Andy Donoghue of Hodnett Forde and Lisney Sotheby's International Realty: now the same pairing are lined up to sell Rathclaren House, on five minded acres with sea glimpses, with a price guide considerably less that the area's magical Disney castle ... it's launched at €2.95m.
Coolmain Castle
Rathclaren House previously featured here, back in 2008 when the market was still strong, priced at that time at €1.5m and in a condition that — diplomatically — reflected its age, despite being generally well presented and maintained. Previous owners included the Wilson family for c 20 years prior, and before that the UK diplomat Sir Geofroy Tory (1912 to 2012) who served as Britain's ambassador to Ireland in the 1960s and who retired after an international career to Rathclaren, in a gentle West Cork setting.
Interior grace at Rathclaren
Buyers in 2008 were Axel Thiel, CEO of a specialist industrial company related to the auto sector Thiel & Heuche in Germany, and his wife Philippa (nee Graves), internationally based and who fell for its charms upon their very first glimpse of it. They bought it straight away, after first viewing from the Wilsons after it appeared in the Irish Examiner Property pages and before any rival bidding could take place.
Upwardly mobile
The couple then with teenage children had been in the hunt for a Georgian property in Cork at the time and knew just what they hoped for. Philippa's family home is Ballylickey House, between Bantry and Glengarriff, now four generations in Graves hands (related to the poet and author Robert Graves) and the family are now only selling Rathclaren to take over at Ballylickey House: 'It's a very difficult decision to sell,' Philippa acknowledges.
Kitchen with German limestone floor with fossil traces
What they are selling both is — and is not — what they bought back in '08, given its near total internal rebuild in the original retained building envelope, the construction equivalent of a total organ transplant and rebirth.
Bright side in
Not only is the mainc 4,000sq ft house as good as, or better, than new, so too is the former coach house and outbuilding, brought down to retention of the stone front wall and arch only and then fully rebuilt as a three-bedroom 2,300sq ft guesthouse, fully self-contained (bar a proper kitchen, easily provided) and, at its far end, a two-bed staff house, currently lived in by the full-time caretaker and attentive groundsman.
Guest cottage
The rebuilding work took a full two years, to painstaking detail, with a local crew headed by builder Dan Healy whom the Thiels praise highly. Specialist conservation and new joinery work was done to an exceptional standard by London-based Patrick O'Donovan, who did the windows, typically six-over-six sliding sashes, working window shutters on the deep walls, doors, architraves and pristine staircase, the works, while reclaimed pitch pine wood lines the modestly-sized study en route to the dining room.
Modest add-ons or wings were placed, with glass roof lanterns, for a feature triple aspect dining room and for the large and hospitable kitchen, done by House of Coolmore, with a limestone floor brought in from Germany, complete with fossils to spot in the stone underfoot.
From the floors (dug out, and redone and finished in solid oak when found to be wringing wet), right up to the roof, all inside is new or newly finished, bar superb original fireplaces (one an Adam chimneypiece or Adam style, with polished brass insert) and thick internal walls.
Courtyard cluster with lustre
It's quite the experience to go up into the spacious attic of a 200-year-old house, with hipped roof and internal valley (holding solar panels) and see every stout roof timber is new: there's reassurance in this for the centuries yet to come...
For all of its Georgian grace, the five-bay home is far from being overly grand or grandeur, and from day one had quite simple plasterwork and internal architectural embellishment.
It functions really well as a manageable home of supreme comfort, with twin formal reception rooms interlinked via solid double doors (it's BER exempt, having been listed post-upgrades), with four bedrooms and a mod
estly enlarged great ground level floor plan which, originally, held a small room for the rector to meet his parishioners in. It was just to the right of the off-centre fan-lit 'front' door, which is around to the far side of the long and leafy approach drive.
Guest/staff accommodation in a converted stable/coachhouse
Each façade is different: that entrance with ornate fan over the original door is slate-hung, with slates in graduated sizes for perspective. The main five-bay faces south for views to the water by Courtmacsherry bay and village, whose lights sparkle in evenings and night, amid otherwise perfect night skies, delineated by soaring trees, including a beast of a macrocarpa, likely as old as Rathclaren itself.
I see the sea
Joint agents Eileen Neville of Lisney Sotheby's IR and Hodnett Forde's Andy Donoghue say Rathclaren House 'stands as a refined and meticulously restored period residence of notable architectural and historical interest,' adding, 'this distinguished home was conceived in alignment with the ecclesiastical and social heritage of the time.'
Now wholly secular since about the 1950s when it left Church of Ireland hands for a series of private owners, it's on five acres, largely wooded, with extensive planting done by the Thiels during their caring tenure, including adding the likes of European black pines, Sequoia redwoods, Ginkos, Handkerchief trees, and Silver Birches to the existing long-settled stock, of indigenous deciduous trees and pines, including the signature, stand-out macrocarpa.
Green fingered
The grounds, on a gentle slope east to west and also down away from the house to the south, remain largely wooded, with defined sections, walks, walled sections and old stone boundaries, and openings, interspersed with rhododendron and other colourful intercessions and include lawns which included a tennis court at some time, fruit gardens and frames. There is joyous growth and greenery right up to the walls of the main house, to the coach house, and adjoining staff house (with a mix of six dormer windows and conservation-style Veluxes in slate roofs), all the time with glimpses back through the trees to the pyramidal roof of the 1870s added tower at Rathclaren Church.
Rathclaren's Holy Trinity church Picture: Dan Linehan
Departing vendors the Thiels say most of the time their private retreat property is so quiet 'you can hear a pin drop', but perhaps at this stage they are more than used to the chimes and peal of the 10 tubular bells installed in the belfry in the 1890s … which appeared to be out by an hour to the 'real' time when visited in the past week? (The refinished clock face in black and gilt has a pock mark by the7 o'clock setting, said to be from a bullet in the Civil War era.)
Something to aspire to.... Image: Dan Linehan
The auctioneers say Rathclaren 'offers a rare combination of privacy, serenity, and natural beauty', within short distances of Cork City, international airport, Kinsale, and the further roll out of West Cork towns from Bandon and Clonakilty. It mixes preservation of its original layout and essential charms, upgrades of outbuildings, double garage, wine and fuel stores 'with thoughtful incorporation of modern conveniences, representing a harmonious fusion of traditional elegance and contemporary luxury'.
Pitch pine perfection
VERDICT: It's rare to find a glebe home of such local history and heritage with new life breathed into its old bones, in such a timeless setting, with huge peace of mind thanks to the quality and thoroughness of the works done. Next owners can be expected to fall as heavily for Rathclaren House as its owners did back in 2008.