Galtees’ cracker
An 86ac holding of strong south Tipperary land is on the market for €500,000, writes
Itravelled to south Tipperary before the snow fell and the storm blew last week. It was a lovely morning for the drive from Limerick to Mitchelstown. The air was crisp, the sun was shining and the Galtees looked magnificent.
I was headed to see an 86ac residential farm at Moonaloughra, Burncourt in Co Tipperary located between Mitchelstown and Cahir.
After making the mistake of taking the motorway towards Cahir I had to double back along the old main Cork to Dublin road passing the Kilcoran Lodge to get to the turn-off for Burncourt.
Thanks to Google Maps and signs erected by Wexford auctioneer David Quinn, I arrived at the long avenue to the farm. The holding is to be sold at auction and guided at €500,000 or just under €6,000/ac.
Situated in a lovely part of the country, the farm has the Galtees to the rear where the peak of Galteemore was catching the morning sun overhead as we walked the land. Ahead of us in the medium distance Waterford’s Comeraghs rose to meet the sky.
The farmstead is reached by a shared private avenue that ends at the farm gate. The place hasn’t been inhabited for a long time and the land has been let in recent years.
The house is a traditional hip-roofed, two-storey farmhouse but is now in need of complete refurbishment. The accommodation includes a parlour, a kitchen and a dining room that was laterally used as a bedroom and to the rear is a scullery and a back hall. Upstairs are three bedrooms and a fully equipped bathroom.
The house is in need of total refurbishment and would take a lot of effort and expenditure to bring it back to its former state. For anyone with an interest in rural vernacular architecture, it has the makings of a great project.
The yard is traditional with the best of the buildings consisting of a three–column haybarn walled and floored as a silage pit with lean-to adjoining containing 26 cubicles.
A series of older slated stone buildings in varied states of disrepair make up the rest of the out offices and include an old piggery, a henhouse, the remnants of a kitchen garden and a pleasure garden.
Grazing ground
The land is mainly made up of good grazing ground laid out in the shape of a boot and split into about 20 fields divided by traditional hedgerow, some of it well kept.
The upper part near to the house is located around that part of the boot covering the calf and shin and it tapers off to low ground around the ankle portion.
Here there is about 10ac of scrubland in need of drainage and reclamation. Indeed there is a good network of drainage that needs cleaning. The land then rises to a nice crown of ground around the foot, which is bounded by the Burncourt River.
There is piped water from a private supply to most divisions and while the ground was fine and firm under foot in the hardy weather it has signs of poaching and could do with being reseeded.
It is doubtless a fine farm of ground that with some work could become a very productive holding.
David Quinn is expecting lively local interest when the place comes to auction at the nearby Kilcoran Lodge at 3pm on Wednesday, March 21.