Aren’t the Irish Independent Property Supplement a disgrace?
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DREAM TIME BECOMES A REALITY
KILLENARD, CO LAOIS
FROM €600,000CLASSICALLY DESIGNED, ELEGANT IRISH COUNTRY HOUSES
The stunningly elegant country houses currently being built by Surestone at Killenard in Co. Loais are as far removed from the high-density developments in Dublin as it would be possible to get.
Space, luxury and glamour are all on offer at Carriglea, a well-designed development of 52 houses where the second phase has now gone on the market with agents Nolan and Brophy in charge of sales………
Carriglea is near the Heritage Golf and Country Club where the course was designed by Seve Ballesteros and Jeff Howes……….
For house hunters, this is dream time become reality. Here, within reasonable reach of Dublin, is a choice of different house types, all based on the Classical large Irish country house theme, with period elegance to provide a prestigious alternative for the buyer who has always wished for a fine country mansion…………
The entrance to the development sets the standard with tall cut stone piers and iron railings and a central water feature inside. The entrance is flanked on both sides by two period-style gate lodges. There will be ample use of semi-mature trees as well as period-style fencing.
Architectural design is by Damien Hughes and Associates of Killcullen…….(IRISH INDEPENDENT PROPERTY SUPPLEMENT 01/04/05)
Aren’t the Irish Independent Property Supplement a disgrace? Lauding this sort of putrid muck while at the same time showing no clue as to why higher density development with good public transport links is essential to the future well-being of the country.
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Sue Ellen’s granny’s annex. Looooove the garden, pity about the drive.
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Yes Devin, that small caption below the image says it all doesnt it? “As far removed from the high density developments in Dublin that it would be possible to get”. What I think is most worrying about this is what it says about demand. There are obviously people out there who want this sort of home (lifestyle). This form of demand is driven to some extent by the media, but on the other hand I don’t think they would print artilcles like that unless there were people there to buy into the idea in the first place.
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Dreadfull door and window detailing and what a postage stamp garden for such a grand statement of a house, I suppose looking on the bright side at least it isn’t perched on top of a hill.
Regarding the newspaper I suppose the agents have been doing some advertising and this article is their reward for being loyal customers of Independent News & Media PLC. I read in the Irish Times annual results for 2000 that property & recruitment advertising made up 40% of total turnover for the year 2000. Cheerleading is an art and that particular advert is as good example of cheerleading based on customer loyalty as you will ever see, I expected better from Cliona O’Donaghue she normally does a better job as editor.
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@Sue wrote:
what a lot of snobs you people are
I don’t that your interpretation is fair, these are not starter homes that we are talking about, at those prices something a lot better could and should have been delivered.
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Does anyone else get the feeling that the articles in the property supplements are, in most cases, just a re-hash of the developers/ auctioneers/ estate agents advertising blurbs??
I’m sick of reading what seems like journalistic opinion but is instead a promo for a “fantastically” located “spacious” one bed ground floor flat in a new development in Ballyfermot (Sandyford etc., etc.).
I think they just copy and paste out of the press releases. There is usually very little, if any, criticism of the terrible replicates style of apartment that is going up all over this city!
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@Sue wrote:
what a lot of snobs you people are
Sue, those sorts of developments are constructed with one type of person in mind: the sort that likes to avoid the realities of both country and city living, but have the benefits of both. By closing themselves off in to a little enclave where they encounter no one that they don’t want to, they get a false impression of country dwelling with all the comforts of urban life. I really am not sure if you are calling the right people snobs.
emf, I think you have a made a very good point there. However Thomond’s point earlier on about ‘Cheerleading’ makes alot of sense (unfortunately)
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@emf wrote:
Does anyone else get the feeling that the articles in the property supplements are, in most cases, just a re-hash of the developers/ auctioneers/ estate agents advertising blurbs??
Absolutely. You see this all the time in the various property supplements. But I’ve never seen it presented in such unashamed glowing tones as above.…you have to ask what kind of schmucks do the Irish Indo Property Supplement have writing for them?
Sue, the villages of Ireland are covered in these kind of mock-period estates tacked onto the edges of them…. As Phil said it’s what people want. But they result indirectly in destruction of real heritage, they don’t knit into the existing village structure, they are (to many) a visual blight and they are designed as car-dependent commuter housing to a town or city maybe 50 miles away, thus contributing to congestion, poor air quality and ozone-depleting emissions.
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Any prospect of Dublin ever getting something like this?
makes househunting a lot easier, although it could use some improvements/more accurate data at times. Between this and (where you have an address) Google maps satellite images (which covers Toronto) you can see both what’s on offer in your price range and what the neighbourhood is like.
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this is snobbery:
Phil: those sorts of developments are constructed with one type of person in mind: the sort that likes to avoid the realities of both country and city living, but have the benefits of both. By closing themselves off in to a little enclave where they encounter …… (blah blah)
How do you know what sort of person is going to buy that house? Stereotyping people should have no place on a website dedicated to critiquing architecture.
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“…within reasonable reach of Dublin…”
How does one define ‘reasonable’? “Honey, I’m just popping into Dublin city centre for a pint of milk- I should be back in three to four hours, depending on the traffic. Actually, y’know what? I think I’ll take the bike…”
Sue- it is not snobbery to question the truth of such statements as the above (whatever about the debate on the style). Far from snobbery, such questioning derives ultimately from a (I should say ‘my’, as I don’t necessarily speak for all) …from MY belief that such developments undermine the common good of the nation, i.e. by encouraging car dependency, promoting social segregation (if there are gate lodges, are there gates too?), etc.
But then again, Laois doesn’t exactly have a good reputation in planning recently- wholesale rezoning of village peripheries (counter to the NSS, all perceptions of good planning practice…) for the (alleged) benefit of a select few landowners, anyone?This thread has concentrated on the stylistic side of Devin’s original post, but he made similar points about density in it too.
PS For the record, I think they’re horrible. A recent thread asked about regional architectural styles- these would be an example of the polar opposite. (Where’s the smiley for throwing up?)
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@Sue wrote:
this is snobbery:
Phil: those sorts of developments are constructed with one type of person in mind: the sort that likes to avoid the realities of both country and city living, but have the benefits of both. By closing themselves off in to a little enclave where they encounter …… (blah blah)
How do you know what sort of person is going to buy that house? Stereotyping people should have no place on a website dedicated to critiquing architecture.
Sue. my comments were completely based on the way in which this article is written. It directly indicates the type of buyer who might be interested in it:
For house hunters, this is dream time become reality. Here, within reasonable reach of Dublin, is a choice of different house types, all based on the Classical large Irish country house theme, with period elegance to provide a prestigious alternative for the buyer who has always wished for a fine country mansion…
I dont need to stereo-type, the article has done it for me. Who do you think wants to live there, if you think my opinion is so ‘blah blah’? How can a design like this make a buyer feel ‘prestigious’?
Sue, if that article does not illustrate the point enough you should have a look at the auctioneers web-page:
http://www.nolan-brophy.com/html/new_dev.htm#For example:
The developers of Carriglea set out to create magnificent Country Manor style residences at the top end of the market for the discerning purchaser who wants something very special indeed.
or:
These homes will beautifully evoke the pleasures of rural living and this unique development will offer a package for residents and their families on a scale and of a quality simply unavailable in the towns or the city.
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That particular scheme is particularly bad, if you look at 5 design types only two of them could even be considered pastiche the other three are very poor attempts at period replication. What makes a Country House is its setting; they need to be viewed from a distance across a parkland setting.
Thanks for posting the link Phil it really has opened a can of worms
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@DublinLimerick wrote:
Aren’t the Irish Independent Property Supplement a disgrace?
You appear to lack grammatical knowledge.
Absolutely. It is nearly as bad as someone saying DublinLimerick! 🙂
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DublinLimerick you cannot change the title of a thread after noticing an error. If you want to see some real grammatical blunders, visit Phil’s link above…
It also features ‘The Moorings’:
Thank goodness the picture’s that small. Despite what has been said about the ‘luxury’ estate above, I don’t think I’d go for the high density option either…
“The Moorings are a block of luxury apartments / duplex units overlooking the River Liffey designed with the emphasis on space and full use of the panoramic views of the surrounding countryside.”
Yes views from the building, clearly not of it.
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That Nolan Brophy website certainly says a lot. Actually, I’ll just post it again in case Sue missed it;
SUE CLICK HERE: http://www.nolan-brophy.com/html/new_dev.htm#DublinLimerick, yes, I know perfectly well it would normally be “Isn’tâ€. I use “Aren’t†as in “Aren’t they?†because the preponderance of, and positive coverage of, period-style development in the I. I. supplement clearly reflects the group of people who put it together, and to distinguish it from the main paper, who have some good writers like Treacy Hogan and John S. Doyle.
More than anything when I flick through the I. I. property supplement, I find it hard to believe it is 2005. It’s more like we’re in the first wave of ‘Georgian-style’ building of 20-30 years ago (popularised, inadvertently, by the Irish Georgian Society’s campaigns to save real Georgian architecture), except it’s much more sinister now because the sale of development land is a business/income in itself, & all the other reasons mentioned already. It was full of crap again today!
It was the sick phraseology like “stunningly elegant country housesâ€, the building company being called ‘Surestone’ (you wouldn’t find one piece of real stone on those houses), and the parallel ignorance of planning issues that really got me about that I. I. piece. Incidentally, there’s no name on the article, but the name on the top of the page is Valerie McGrath, so I presume it is by her. Hard to believe this piece to appeared in her own paper a few months ago: https://archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?t=3262
I know I’m stating the obvious here, but estates like ‘Carriglea’ are born out of a vicious circle of bad planning: – sprawl, one-off housing & its associated traffic generation reduce the liveability of urban centres, where the jobs are, resulting in the building of estates like this, supposedly ‘away from it all’. But, being car-dependent, they further reduce the liveability of urban centres & the area around them, generating more demand for estates and one-offs in quiet places. And so it goes on.…
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I’d agree about the Indo’s coverage of this type of development, and this type of architecture. I don’t want to name names of journalists, but I find coverage of ‘real’ Georgian equally fawning in the Independent’s pages, not least by a person previously mentioned here – with the most fruity of vocabulary applied to the most standard of Georgian and Victorian housing. They also constantly call Victorian housing Georgian.
But the fact that the same voluptuous language used to describe these ‘modern’ developments is applied in equal measure to the most stunning or architecturally significant of period properties makes so much of their supplement all the more preposterous.
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@DublinLimerick wrote:
Aren’t the Irish Independent Property Supplement a disgrace?
You appear to lack grammatical knowledge.
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The thread title might lack grammatical correctness, but it is logically fallacious to state that its author lacks grammatical knowledge. How can you tell? Maybe (s)he chose not to use it? Maybe (s)he chose the deliberate mistake? (As seems to have been the case.)You want to get nit-picky? We can get nit-picky. I’d rather stick to the point of the thread. 😉
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The property sections of all the papers are the same. They don’t, however, purport to be anything but estate agents’ hardcopy. They aren’t “architectural” supplements although they do sometimes try to bring some innovative houses to our attention. The point is that newspapers make a lot of cold cash out of these supplements – they are, don’t forget, 20 pages of adverts. Newspapers, therefore, are not about to bite the hands that feed them. They only print what the Planning authorities allow to be built.
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@Areaone wrote:
Sweet mother of Jesus!
I notice the date of the supplement is April 1st…….could it be an April Fools?……It must be suely!!
😮 Ooh my God, its not a joke after all as the link proves – http://www.nolan-brophy.com/html/new_dev.htm#
Still at prices starting “FROM €600,000”, sure isn’t it great value all the same if you want to be tied in to a shite quality of life and a 40 year mortgague. Yes indeed, 24 hours a week stuck in traffic for 600K. Pass me the bucket.
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@Lotts wrote:
Shame on Damien Hughes.
That sure is one badly proportioned door.
Could be the very example of curved PVC that you were looking for though Grahamthis is a mid 18C house near where I live. They were neeearly right
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But not quite…
You make a good point about this type of stuff being in their interests, but the fact that it’s often not even kept off the front pages makes it quite ridiculous.
These articles just fuel demand for these developments: fanning the flames of bad architecture, bad planning and bad environmental practice. -
FYI – Also from the estate agents website:
“Killenard’s elevated location gives panoramic views over the Kildare Plains to the North and the Wicklow Mountains to the East. It is located in luscious and scenic countryside.The old road running through the village is one of the five ancient roads of Ireland known as the “Sli Dala†(way of the tribes) dating back to Pre-Christian times.
To the North of Killenard, the ruins of Lea Castle at the Barrow River are still visible and it was built in the 3rd Century being one of the more important Castles in Leinster at the time. Also beside the village is Carrig Hill where the first Earl of Portarlington erected a spire in the 1780’s and set the hill aside for the hunting and leisure activities of the local gentry.
In keeping with the area’s ancient history, the developer’s have taken the name of this development i.e. Carriglea from the above mentioned Lea Castle and Carrig Hill combining the two words into “Carrigleaâ€. On the edge of the village is the imposing Mount Henry (Mount St. Anne’s) built by the local Landlord’s the Skeffington-Smiths in 1820.
The entire region is steeped in fascinating history ranging from the ancient and once magnificent Fort at the Rock of Dunamaise (towards Portlaoise) dating from before 1200 listing Strongbow and the Sons of the King of Leinster as its occupants and probably dates back to pre – Celtic days. The nearby Emo Court residence dates back to 1790 and is a splendid architectural masterpiece designed by James Gandon (who designed the Customs House & Four Courts in Dublin). Now Emo Court is owned by the state with wonderful public walks on the adjoining grounds and woods which can be enjoyed by owners in Carriglea. A wonderful facility at your doorstep. “
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Sunday Indo even worse, very much driven by advertising ‘cheerleading’, editor strangely tries to infuse the selling pitch with details of his personal life, a la A A Gill or Clarkson but fails miserably. The danger of this misleading hyperbole is it creates a market among the readership, which, apparently is the hightest Sunday readership.
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Whatever you think about these houses and I have seen much more lavish old style houses there is a definite market for this type of house if there was no market no one would be building them. Personally I wouldn’t pay 600,000 euro plus for anything less than a shopping centre in Laois it is just too far from Dublin and traffic gets worse every year. What they don’t tell you in the ad is that Newlands Cross is worse than its ever been and please don’t get me started on the mad cow.
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More from I. I. property supplement on Friday:
These are being advertised (in a separate ad on the page) as “period homes” – that warrants a complaint to the advertising standards authority.
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Newly built? Well why is it for sale then? – some landowner fiddling the system.
The sales pitch reads like an An Bord Pleanala schedule for refusal of planning permission; ‘newly-built for sale’ (no occupancy clause); ‘dormer bungalow’ (obtrusive design); ‘elevated site’ (would have high visual impact on surrounding area)
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@finlay wrote:
Sunday Indo even worse, very much driven by advertising ‘cheerleading’, editor strangely tries to infuse the selling pitch with details of his personal life, a la A A Gill or Clarkson but fails miserably. The danger of this misleading hyperbole is it creates a market among the readership, which, apparently is the hightest Sunday readership.
Could not agree more with Finlay about the appaling Sindo supplement. Its even trashier than its weekday counterpart, showing a crass ignorance of all architecutal and heritage issues combined with supercilious schoolboy writing that is meant to pass as wit. If this is the largest circulation Sunday, god help Ireland.
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Ah you’d have to love it all – lol
‘Decorative streetlighting is a distinguishing feature’
‘An impressive custom-made Georgian front door’
‘Unique rounded windows with plaster surrounds’
‘FIVE bathrooms’?!
And why people get away with building speculatively… – I’d hate to see the reality of what AT have to experience daily – I really don’t want to know.
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@Devin wrote:
More from I. I. property supplement on Friday:
I cannot quite figure it out, but there seems to be a striking resemblance between these houses and the ones being referred to in this link:
http://www.pleanala.ie/REP/129/R129196.DOC
Either way, the description of the Bord Pleanala inspector is quite telling:
“The initial report of the Planner clearly identified the principal planning issues associated with the proposed development. This site is in a remote, unserviced rural area. The layout and form of this development is suburban and the development appears purely speculative. It is wholly inappropriate to be developing such suburban type development in this rural area. Such development would constitute undesirable ribbon development, would undermine the rural amenities of this area and would lead to demands for public services and community facilities. Such development is more appropriate to existing settlements in the area, such as the nearby village of Ballintubber.”
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hey you there, ctesiphon, do you do any work?…. 🙂
great website http://www.idler.co.uk
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tungstentee, doc brown, should it not be me that you should be directing that at? 😉
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How very smug to scoff and scorn at developments, but sure what the heck – look at these gems :rolleyes:
Luckily, if that isn’t quite your cup of tea, there’s a varity of designs on offer to cater for all executive tastes:
(top of page photo-link)http://www.sherryfitz.ie/sf2003.exe?pageref=res_property&propid=LKP00716&pagemode=res
This is my favourite:
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…..browsing, found this on today’s Sunday Indepenent property page:
“Artist’s impression of the €40m marina village development in the heart of Athlone. Births in the 100-birth marina cost €35,000 “
Expecting a baby boom? -
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Current planning application for another one of those mock-period housing estates just like the one at the start of the thread in Killenard, Co. Laois; this time in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary (Clonmel Borough Council Planning Ref. 05/132).
But leaving aside the vulgar housing style (imo), how are we ever going to create logical extensions to our towns and villages if these type of low-density, car-based housing estates keep being built? If developers keep applying for these estates and Councils keep granting them, how are we ever going to create the kind of sustainable communities we are told we need, where all services are within walking/cycling distance and the built environment integrates harmoniously with that of the existing town or village?
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I read in the ST that the indo got nailed over this
a bit like a certain painting
Peach of a story — pity it was too good to be true
A GOOD rule of thumb when reading downmarket Irish papers these days is that the content will be a mixture of fact and fiction. But the Irish Independent’s love of factoids means it is a sucker for hoax stories. Remember when it published on its front page a made-up prank that Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, was demanding the return of the National Gallery’s Caravaggio?
Last Tuesday the Indo reported that the wife of a philandering husband had daubed his €90,000 BMW M3 coup
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http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/property/2006/0427/216653315RPBALLYBRITTAS.html
WINNING FORMULA OF HIGH SPEC AT LOW COST
Fiona Tyrrell 27/04/06Housing Trends
Just because no one has heard of Ballybrittas doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve good quality, claims developer Mick Cox whose high-spec development in the small Co Laois village was an instant sell-out earlier this month.Young buyers and retired couples queued from 4am to put their deposit down for one of 77 homes at Graigavern Lodge, Ballybrittas located half way between Monasterevin and Portarlington in Co Laois.
Prices started at €259,000 for three-bedroom semi-detached houses with 119sq m (1,280sq ft) of living space and went up to €420,000 for 175sq m (1,885sq ft) four/five-bed homes.With a cancellation list of 70 names, John Dunne of Hume Auctioneers says they could have sold the development twice over.
The secret of the success of the scheme? “Very good quality at a competitive price,” said the developer, Mick Cox of Boderg, who has been building in London for years. “Just because the houses are not €750,000 houses doesn’t mean they can’t have a good quality fit-out,” he explains.
People don’t want cheap and cheerful anymore and are fed up with small, high density three-bed semis with the creaking door, no storage space and low quality, according to Cox. “We recognise that people are not just buying a house. They are making the biggest purchase of their lives and you have to get it right.”
The UK residential sector is streets ahead of Ireland in terms of finish and quality, according to Cox. Cox transferred some elements of the UK sector to Ireland for the scheme. Site foremen were brought in from the UK. A quality control team flew over once a week to oversee the finish of the houses.
The Irish idea of getting nothing but the house and doing the rest yourself is unheard of in the UK, according to Cox.
“The demand is so strong in Ireland that a lot of developers have taken their eye off the ball in terms of quality fit-out and finish.” The spec at Graigavern Lodge is above average; particularity for homes in the wider commuter belt.
……………..A big player in the UK scene, Cox’s UK company Hollybrook builds around 600 houses and apartments a year in the greater London area, making it the fourth largest developer in London.
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Cox, who is originally from Rooskey in Co Roscommon and his wife Pauline, from Mountmellick, Co Laois, purchased the site in Ballybrittas just over a year ago.
After the success of the Ballybrittas scheme, Cox is scouting around for more suitable sites and plans to become a big player in the Irish market.© The Irish Times
[align=center:1ti5eeys]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[/align:1ti5eeys]
Well this is just what we need to reverse our chronic sprawl and car-dependency!
We’ve realised that the only sustainable way forward is to create compact high-quality urban areas well-served by public transport, but now Mick Cox is going to come here and start building estates of luxury homes 50 miles from Dublin from which the only means of transport is the car!
Dissapointed in the Irish Times’ tone of reportage here!
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Still in the slow land
THE Edgeworthstown bypass opened yesterday with little fanfare. Quite right too. Too often in the recent past, governments, and not only the Fianna Fail-PD coalition, cackled like a hen laying an egg every time they unveiled a few kilometres of motorway and dual carriageway.
It was scandalous that these roads were constructed in that piecemeal fashion, and degrading that politicians boasted of achievements which were trifling by comparison with the progress made in poorer countries like Portugal.
Our motorway programme should have started 30 years ago. An entire network should have been completed 15 years ago at the very latest. Instead, even now, even after 12 years of the Celtic Tiger, we proceed at a snail’s pace.
The phrase is singularly appropriate here. A campaign to save a rare snail held up the Kildare bypass. A campaign to save an insignificant castle placed the M50 in its present weird condition, neither finished nor unfinished.
Projects that in other countries whizz along are delayed unconscionably in Ireland by antics like the Carrickmines Castle affair.
But it is not enough to blame factors like these. A government that really wants things done will get them done. But the present Government has consistently underspent on the capital side of the Budget. Planning and vision both call for a different style.
Todays editorial in the Irish Independent
Whilst I agree with much of the above the presumption that infrastructure can be steamrolled through without heed to due process is not strictly true it is worth remembering that the Kildare Bypass project was stopped by the European Commission and Carrickmines was entirely avoidable.
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Dear oh dear – from Dundalk’s ‘The Argus’ newspaper. Offers over €775,000 please.
Online version here: http://www.mallonbest.com/house_details.asp?house_id=372&house_type=3
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I just found this topic (being a bit aged, as it is) and read with delight. Well, irritation, disbelief and delight.
The article quoted in original post is stunning, but I particularly like the one few posts above – the executive living joke. I constantly had to look from the text to the picture to check if that is the house they are actually talking about.
I’m amazed by the vocabulary used to describe this overpriced, exposed, enclosed by public road, awful piece of junk:
ultimate, prestigious, lifetime opportunity, truly quality, residence, distinctive, imposing, beautifully, generous, possibilities, large, maintenance free, appeal, extras, wonderfully, surprising privacy (?!!), fine, rarity, appreciated – all in such a short note!There is a similarity in this thread to the ‘architecture in words’ one and they are both, I think, more important than they appear. Quality of writing about architecture – and housing in general – in Ireland is very poor and is to some extent responsible for the things that have gone wrong here.
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