DIY dad even built the swimming pool at this €895,000 Glengarriff  home

A MAN limited only by his own imagination, Patrick Rodgers could be found on any given day reworking a modest Glengarriff bungalow into the home of his dreams, replete with eco-heated indoor swimming pool, gym, sauna and orangery greenhouse.

 Nothing he did though could beat the vista at Slinneadóir, although Patrick didn’t know it until he climbed a tall tree on the site. Lo and behold, beyond the dense overgrowth was the whole of Bantry Bay, taking in Whiddy Island, the Sheep’s Head peninsula, and beyond, the Caha Mountains.

He bought the house on a one acre site from a German woman in 2006 and spent the next 17 years clearing, remodelling, extending, transforming, until the house and gardens were what he wanted — albeit the work would most likely have continued ad infinitum if he hadn’t been summoned by the Great Chief of DIY in the Sky (he created the world in seven days, remember?) in 2023.

His daughter, one of seven children, said he was a “workaholic” who could “turn his hand to anything” and that included building a swimming pool. Fortunately, he had a useful skillset as owner of Little Island-based Standard Engineering Cork Ltd and he also had the network of connections to tap for advice when he needed it. He knew which experts to draft in too, for the big stuff.

“He built the swimming pool and brought in specialists to commission it. He designed the heating system for the pool, installing more than 20 solar panels. The panels were constantly heating a large tank of water,” says his daughter.

“It was a very efficient system, and while he still needed electricity for the pumps and the air handling unit, we didn’t have the expense of having to heat the water. He designed the heat exchange unit himself,” his daughter says. Not content with building an indoor pool, he fitted out the pool house with a gym, a snooker area, a sauna and a shower room. 

He had thoughts too of turning the overhead attic into a bowling alley, but never quite got around to it.

“The plan was to put in a bowling alley the whole length of the attic space. He was a man only limited to whatever his imagination came up with,” his daughter says.

Sometimes his imagination got carried away, like the time he decided to go wild with a paintbrush, spreading purple around the garden, on balustrades and garden statues and lamp posts.

“It was like Barney the Dinosaur,” his daughter laughs, although she grew used to it and says the colour really pops now.

Her father built the four-bed house as a summer home because he always wanted a base in West Cork (he lived there permanently from 2012. The family loved East Cork too, particularly Youghal, where he’d built a little cottage.

Once he started work on the Glengarriff project, the kids would be up and down to help out every weekend, too-ing and fro-ing between Glengarriff and the family home in the Cork city suburb of Ballyvolane. As Slinneadóir took shape, they’d spend entire summers there. The house grew over time, with extensions added around 2010, and it’s now almost 3,500 sq ft. Expansive patio areas were added too and the greenhouse, which has a Standard Engineering steel frame. “Anyone with green fingers will love the greenhouse,” the daughter says.

Patrick particularly liked when his own siblings visited. As the youngest in a household of six, who grew up on Mount Agnes Road in Churchfield, he was keen for them to see his handiwork. He was generous too in having friends stay over.

“Loads of friends over the years would have stayed for a week here and there,” his daughter says.

“If you got a good day, there was nowhere else like it. It was as good as the Balearic Islands. On warm days when we’d be packing up the car to head West, it felt like we were going to the Costa del Sol,” she adds.

The agent selling is Olivia Hanafin of Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill and she says the view from Slinneadóir “is probably the nicest I’ve seen in a while in that location (Derrycreha)”.

Ms Hanafin expects it to attract seekers of both a holiday home and a permanent home. She’s already had interest from UK buyers. The guide price for Slinneadóir is €895,000.

Cork city and airport are just over an hour’s drive away and the prodigiously pretty village of Glengarriff is close by. The towns of Bantry, Kenmare, and Castletownbere can be reached by car in half an hour.

VERDICT: Hard to beat a site like this. Wonderful gardens and the luxury of an indoor pool, gym and sauna make it attractive in any weather