Hollyhock Cottage & Cottage Garden Nursery.
E-mail: greenfingers@tinet.ie
Phone/fax: **353-(0)29-60084
The owners are currently offering as a combined sale that freehold property known as Hollyhock Cottage and Cottage Garden Nursery situated at Aghaneenagh, Newmarket, in Co. Cork, Ireland. This is an opportunity to acquire a most attractive old Irish cottage with an integral thriving family business. It would ideally suit someone who is a garden enthusiast, looking for a peaceful life and with the bonus of being able to earn a good living while working from home.
Price.
Offers are invited in the region of £160,000 (Sterling), + stock at cost.
The Property.
Comprises a stone built cottage, (Hollyhock Cottage), with outbuildings and extensive landscaped gardens, together with an adjacent garden centre, (Cottage Garden Nursery), on approximately 1.2 acres of land. Three boundaries have dairy farmland adjoining, the fourth being the lane that serves the area. The property is on a secluded site, with none of the neighbouring farms visible. Newmarket is a rural town in the south west of Ireland, within an hour’s drive of Cork, Killarney and Limerick. The larger town of Kanturk is 4 miles away.
Hollyhock Cottage was built about 100 years ago and has been extensively and sensitively restored by its current owners over the past six years. It is on an old ridgeway road at 550ft (170m) elevation and enjoys good views all around. The site is well drained and is very fertile, which has allowed development of the present gardens to a very high standard.
Items Included in the Sale.
The house, known as Hollyhock Cottage, together with all fixtures and fittings. These to include all fixed lights and cupboards, as well as the cooker, refrigerator, washing machine and freezer.
The garden centre, known as Cottage Garden Nursery, together with all items on the Asset Register.
The Locality.
There are several schools all within 4 miles at Kanturk, Newmarket and Boherbue and Cork is a University City. The local towns also provide a wide range of shops, restaurants, banks and all commercial activities. The nearest railway station is Banteer, about 6 miles away, which links to the main Cork-Limerick-Dublin line at Mallow. The main international airports are at Cork, (1 hour’s drive) and Shannon, (1½ hours). Car ferries also serve Cork, with sailings to France and the UK.
Hollyhock Cottage.
The original part of the cottage is stone-built with four main rooms and two smaller rooms attached. The extension built at one end provides another large room and a bathroom, with a small hallway between. The new part has been built using cavity walls, thermally lined, with teak windows, painted to match the others in the house. The whole building is rendered with a roughcast finish and painted pink. Most of the earlier windows have now been replaced with painted teak sash windows to preserve the style of this beautiful cottage. Wooden porches greatly enhance the building, with roses and other climbing plants on some of the walls. The roof is slate-clad, with old ridge tiles covering both parts of the building.
The Cottage Interior.
The main entrance leads into..
The Small Kitchen (7’0" x 6’8", 2.13 x 2.03m).
This is fitted with a deep sink, with hot and cold water supply taps, several purpose-built cupboards and shelves and an attractively tiled work-surface. Quarry tiles cover the floor. Through the large window, with its opening fanlight, there are fine views over the gardens. This room is currently used as the main kitchen with the cooker, refrigerator (both of which will be included in the sale) and microwave installed. Antique-style wall-lights are mounted above the work areas. The ceiling is timber-clad. A waxed pine door from this room (which was once the main external door of the cottage) leads to..
The Larger Kitchen (13’ x 10’9", 3.96 x 3.28m).
This very attractive room has a sash-window looking out over the garden and has concrete floor covered in tile-effect linoleum. A new Stanley stove, which burns any fuel and which keeps this part of the cottage warm during the colder months, sits on a quarry-tiled plinth in the fire alcove. The main lighting is from a central pendant cottage-style lamp. Above the fireplace is the ‘clevy’, a shelf that extends around into one corner. In the other corner alcove, the cupboard has been enlarged to provide an extensive storage area for food and crockery. A wide, grooved, timber picture rail has been built on the walls, to enable a collection of plates to be attractively displayed. There is also a pine reproduction cupboard, the upper part ‘hiding’ the telephone/fax beneath a hinged, sloping lid.
This once would have been the main living room of the cottage and the next three rooms described all lead off this room through stripped and waxed pine doors, (but mind your head as you pass through!).
The Main Bedroom (12’4" x 9’5", 3.76 x 2.87m),
There is an old timber floor, treated and varnished and a sash window overlooking to the rear, out across neighbouring fields. The window reveals are pine clad, making an attractive feature in this room. A 3kW-storage heater is mounted against one wall and it takes its energy during off-peak times at night. The Victorian fireplace is hidden behind the present position of the dressing table. A picture rail runs around the walls and a small hatchway in the ceiling gives access to the roof space.
Bedroom 2 (10’0" x 9’6", 3.05 x 2.90m)
This room has a varnished timber floor and a sash window that looks out onto the outbuildings and gardens at the rear. One wall has had all the plaster removed to reveal the stonework and has been repointed. A picture rail has been added and the guests that come to stay always appreciate this attractive room. A 3 kW-storage radiator is mounted against one wall. The original fireplace has been removed to add a few useful inches to the end wall.
The Dining Room (9’ x 9’6", 2.74 x 2.90m).
This originally would have been the third bedroom of the cottage. It has a sash-window through which the giant hollyhocks frame the view to the gardens beyond. To one corner of this room is the beautifully painted Victorian fireplace, with raised basket and reproduction hearth tiles to match. Leading off the dining room through a timber-clad arch with a stone floor (the original outside wall) you come to..
The Hallway,(5’2" x 6’5", 1.57 x 1.96m).
This area is timber floored, with a teak stable-door beyond which is a small patio area in the garden. For most of the summer months, the top half of this door remains open and is a delightful feature in the cottage, with some of the best views of the whole garden. A traditional pine door from the hall leads to..
The Bathroom (8’3" x 7’0", 2.51 x 2.13m).
There is plenty of timber in evidence in this room, on the floor, bath panel and cladding the reproduction Victorian white wall-mounted handbasin unit. There is a low-level matching WC and the bath, with mixer shower taps, is in a recess behind a decorated glass Victorian style shower screen. The hot press (airing cupboard), has ample storage for linen and also houses the very efficient polystyrene lagged hot water tank. Twin immersion heaters that use off-peak electricity at night provide hot water for the house. There is access from this room, through a trap door fitted with a telescopic ladder, to the loft area in the roof. This is an extensive storage area that covers the whole of the new part of the cottage. It is fully boarded with plywood panels, has a fitted light and also houses the cold water storage tank. The loft, tank and all pipework are fully lagged.
The Parlour (14’4" x 11’6", 4.37 x 3.51m).
Entrance into this room is also from the hallway through a reproduction pine door. This is the brightest room in the cottage, having three teak sash windows on adjacent walls that allow the sun to shine through from early morning until quite late in the evening. The room is timber floored and has an interesting open fireplace, with a genuine antique Victorian hob-grate and quarry-tiled hearth. From this room most of the gardens can be seen and also views of the distant mountains in the south.
The Utility Room (7’7" x 6’1", 2.31 x 1.85m).
This is a small annex connected to the rear of the house, but with access currently from the outside only. There is plenty of space to house the washing machine, tumble-drier and freezer. This room also contains the pressure tank and control gear for the water supply pump at the bottom of the well, which is at the edge of the meadow to the southwest of the cottage.
General Details
All doors in the house are built in the traditional style from tongued and grooved floorboards. The three doors leading off the main kitchen are original and have been stripped and waxed and show clearly the method used in their construction 100 years ago. This design and has been repeated in all other doors made for the new rooms and for all cupboard doors made throughout the cottage and outbuildings during restoration. The original ‘ceilings’ of the cottage were tongued and grooved cladding attached to the underneath of the rafters. This is still in place and can be seen through the inspection hatch in the main bedroom. But years ago it was thought desirable to install lowered ceilings, presumably to conserve heat. These ‘new’ ceilings, which are commonly found in many old Irish cottages, have been constructed from hardboard and suspended from the eaves, in a decorative pattern and painted in soft, contrasting colours. This idea has been copied through into the new part of the house, but in these areas the ceiling panels are fixed to the underside of the load-bearing loft joists.
All rooms have an ample supply of twin 13 amp power sockets and all the wiring is concealed. The kitchen has a separate cooker supply. Separate supply meters log day and night-time electricity consumption and circuits are protected by an earth leakage trip. These meters and circuit breakers are hidden in a wall-mounted timber enclosure. All plumbing has been run beneath the floors and behind panels so there are no unsightly pipes showing. All taps can be individually isolated for maintenance using in-line valves fitted to each supply pipe.
It should be noted that the cottage has plenty of scope for enlargement. There is space in the roof area of the old part of the house that could be made into extra rooms, if new floors are built above the present living area. Also it would be a simple matter to convert the external ‘utility’ room into an en-suite bathroom, linking to either of the present bedrooms. Additional rooms could also be added at the rear, with access through the west side of the parlour.
The Exterior
The main entrance to Hollyhock Cottage is through a pair of old iron gates from the lane into a gravelled area that extends around the gable end to the rear buildings. A paved path runs from the door, around the front of the cottage, passing beneath the walled, raised flowerbeds, to rejoin the gravelled area at the rear.
A stainless-steel submersible pump at the foot of the 115ft. borehole, supplies the house with beautiful fresh water. Waste from the bathroom is carried to a septic tank at the far side of the site. UPVC guttering and downpipes channel the rainwater to underground pipes that lead to a soakaway pit behind the house. This is screened from view by a garden and a picket fence.
Outbuildings.
The original stables at the rear of the cottage have been rebuilt recently to provide a spacious workshop (14’9" x 9’0", 4.5 x 2.74m) with stable doors and an adjoining fuel store (10’0" x 9’0", 3.05 x 2.74m) with a separate access door. Some of these walls are the original stonework and the roof is constructed using painted corrugated iron.
The Gardens
The gardens have been planted with care in true cottage garden style and contain many old-fashioned varieties of herbaceous perennials, colourful annuals, bulbs, roses, shrubs, climbers and trees in mixed border plantings. Flowerbeds, incorporating a pond and rockery, with seating areas alongside enclose the inner lawn. Access to this lawn from the house, is through one of the two arches that are clothed in climbing plants. Roses adorn the walls of the cottage and are also massed in their own separate beds behind the rockery by the pond and also in the raised garden to the south side of the house, where they can be admired through the parlour windows. Other flowerbeds and borders are reached by taking various routes out of the main lawned area. Situated at the far sides of the gardens are the vegetables and soft fruit plots. There is also a good-sized fruit orchard. Ornamental trees follow on from this point and lead to an attractive grove of silver birches, underplanted with many different heathers. Here also are the majestic ‘standing stones’, which lead the eye from a woodland setting to the open space of the remaining meadow. At present this area is kept mown short, like a huge lawn, but could in the future be used for further planting, or for extending the size of the nursery.
Cottage Garden Nursery
Background.
This will be the fourth year of trading since Cottage Garden Nursery was started in March 1996. Audited accounts will confirm that sales have steadily increased each year, due to the hard work put in by the owners and also as it has been shown that there is a considerable upsurge of interest in home owners who are improving their own gardens. This is one of the major growth businesses in Ireland and the potential is for this trend to continue. This area is also becoming very desirable for new house building and there is little competition from other garden centres in the county. Several local garden clubs and I.C.A. groups constantly invite the owners to give informal talks and slide shows at their meetings and to take along plants to sell. Also some of these groups have visited the garden during an evening to have an exclusive ‘guided tour’, with tea in the cottage afterwards. These have proved to be both popular and profitable. It has also brought in more customers as a result.
The Nursery.
About one third of the site is currently taken up with the development of the garden centre. The car park is partially screened from view by a low hedge, but still allowing customers to see how the gardens are changing as each year passes.
A separate entrance from the road leads into the carpark through a farm gate. This area is also used to display the range of composts and paving slabs that are sold. There is a further farm style gate leading off the carpark into the field. The garden centre display area is separated from the carpark by an attractive wooden picket fence, with access through a rustic gate and arch. One long border of the nursery has a rail, along which container-grown trees are displayed and these provide a colourful boundary with the field beyond. The entrance to the nursery leads to the ‘shop’, a large timber shed, which is well stocked with garden sundries and tools. Lighting and power sockets, protected by safety circuit breakers are installed in the shop. The main display beds that contain all the shrubs can be accessed along paved walkways. There are also several tables that are used for showing alpines and bedding plants. At the top end of the site is a poly-tunnel, 50 feet x 17 feet that is used for propagating, repotting and planting containers and hanging baskets. A small heated propagation table is installed within the tunnel. Also in the tunnel are 2 worktables. Beside this is a very large area of low display stands, where young plants and most of the perennials are displayed.
Irrigation.
A comprehensive irrigation system is used to give adequate watering to all the plants and trees in stock. All of the shrub display beds are fitted with overhead spray irrigation and the tree rails have their own supply leading to drip irrigation at every tree. The tunnel has its own twin overhead watering system and the large display area at the top of the nursery has a plentiful supply of rotoframe sprinklers giving total coverage. The water supply, which has proved to date to be totally trouble-free, is from the main supply at the house.
Development of the Business.
The Garden Centre, which had quite humble beginnings, when it was opened on St. Patrick’s Day in 1996, has now changed considerably. The range of plants stocked has increased and there is now a much better understanding of the main seasonal demands from customers. Plants are currently sourced from many more wholesale growers, with an increased awarenes of where to get the best quality. Many more local growers now visit the garden centre regularly and it is possible to purchase annuals and perennials from their sales vans. Indoor plants are also delivered from a local source.
Advertising has been the main reason for attracting new customers. Once these customers ‘find’ us, they usually return, often bringing more friends and relatives with them the next time. So an ever-increasing circle of customers arrive who say that this is the ‘best Garden Centre for miles around’. The business was regularly advertised on the front page of The Corkman for nearly three years until they redesigned their front page. Space is also taken in Yellow Pages and in programmes for local shows. An electric moving hoarding on the front of the local cinema also carries a Garden Centre advertisement. The 1999 Norwich Union Mallow International Garden Festival carried a whole page of editorial about cottage gardening, written by the owners with a mention of where it is situated. This has brought more new customers from many parts of Ireland. The July issue of the Irish Garden Magazine has a report on the web-site also (see below) and this has attracted new custom. But it is the road signs that seem to bring in the most new business. This year they have been redesigned to make them more eye-catching, the entire original ones have been replaced and two more have been introduced down on the Killarney road.
The cottage gardens are becoming quite mature now and visitors are encouraged to walk around them with the owners. This has a twofold effect. It gives encouragement to those planning to start new gardens, that so much can be achieved in a relatively short time. Also, for the enthusiastic gardeners, plants or layouts they may not have seen before can be shown, thus promoting more sales. Naturally supplies of all the plants that are growing in the garden should be available in the nursery, as it is when customers see them actually in flower that they are tempted to purchase them for their own gardens. Comments from customers are quite encouraging: ‘a little bit of Heaven; it’s so peaceful; so much colour’. Many customers want to return regularly just to see the gardens.
This year the Garden Centre has entered the national award scheme, sponsored by An Bord Glas and hope to get the coveted Merit Award which means that the business will be added to the list of ‘Approved Garden Centres’ around Ireland.
So it is confidently expected that the steady growth seen in the business will continue and accelerate now that it has become so much more established and well-known.
General
Being on a ridge, the area is well drained and even after very wet spells, it is not difficult to work on the gardens or to mow the lawns shortly afterwards. The whole site is bounded by a ‘ditch’ or bank, from which are growing many mature native trees. At the top of the field there are tall silver birches and a huge ash tree. Down the sides are hawthorn, blackthorn and sycamores, all of which give very good shelter in the summer and surprisingly good shelter even in winter. To the south are the mountains while in the north, a good view is had across a wooded valley to distant hills. It is a very rural area and during the summer, cows pass the door to and from the milking parlour. It is a most peaceful spot and many of the visitors remark on how quiet it is in our gardens; ‘a little piece of Heaven’ is often quoted. Traffic noise is almost inaudible. Since the gardens were planted, many species of birds, butterflies and many other insects now visit in profusion. The pond attracts frogs and colourful dragonflies. There are signs that foxes and badgers are around at night but no damage is ever done to the plants. Hares are often seen in the lane.
The area has a rich history going back hundreds of years that is very well documented. More recently, for anyone familiar with Alice Taylor’s tales of her childhood, the ‘School through the Fields’ in her first book is just along the lane. For a better look at this area, the 1" Ordnance Survey Discovery Series map number 72 shows all the details and the map reference of Hollyhock Cottage is 310039. The Duhallow Trail, which is a drive encompassing the area, is fully described in a link from the website.
Our website pages show many pictures of the cottage, its restoration, gardens and garden centre, as well as pictures of local scenes not far from here. There are also links to other pages that will be of interest to prospective purchasers.
Finally..
The present owners will ensure that the gardens are fully maintained until the sale is complete. Also full co-operation will be given to the purchaser in the manner in which all trading (i.e. stock purchase, advertising, budgets, financial control and accounting) is currently managed, to ensure a smooth changeover.
E-mail: greenfingers@tinet.ie
Phone/fax: **353-(0)29-60084