€580k Ovens bungalow was one of the first houses built by developer Michael O'Flynn 

ANY day trippers found on the Abbey Road featured here have not come in search of a legendary recording studio synonymous with the Beatles. These particular pilgrims are coming to see Kilcrea Friary, a medieval abbey near Ovens. 

On their way down Abbey Road, they will pass by a more contemporary point of interest — the very first homes built by O’Flynn Construction. The group went on to build another 10,000 homes, and the work continues, but Michael O’Flynn still recalls building the bungalow featured here. 

It was one of three that they built on Abbey Road, back in 1977, well before he built his own home on the same road, having grown up in the neighbourhood.

The vendors of this house say Abbey Road was fantastic to grow up on, with young and fertile imaginations fired by the games they could play around the remains of the friary and nearby Kilcrea Castle.

“It was the best place in the world to grow up,” says the vendor.

“There were kids in five houses on the road and we’d be gone all day, playing in the abbey or building rafts by the nearby River Bride”.

They loved the history of the place, she says, recalling how the Franciscans were permitted to build the abbey by Cormac Láidhir MacCarthy, 7th Lord Muskerry, as protection against marauding English troops. It fell out of use in the 1620s but its grounds have been used for general burial. Among the famous ancient corpses in its graveyard are Cormac Láidhir (killed in battle in1494), and three centuries later, Airt Uí Laoghaire, a Macroom Catholic who came off worst in an argument with a local magistrate over his famous brown mare. Airt is immortalised in Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire, a lament composed by his grieving widow, dissected ad infinitum by generations of Gaelic scholars.

Both friary and castle take their name from the Irish Cill Chré, meaning ‘Church of St Créidh’, aka St Cyra, a formidable 6th century matriarch, said to have been the abbess of a nunnery on a site a mile east of the friary.

All of this ancient loveliness is in open countryside, in the valley of the River Bride, beneath low-lying hills.

“My parents loved the peace and tranquility of the area,” their daughter says.

They loved their family home too and the garden that came with it and both were lovingly tended.

In 2009, they made a few changes, getting rid of a garage and utility and replacing it with a lovely sunroom, a continuation of the long kitchen. 

It looks out over rolling countryside and light streams in through an apex window and French doors.

The doors lead to a patio, laid at the time the sunroom was added. 

It overlooks a well-kept lawn, where the fruits of two apple trees are greatly in evidence. 

Mature trees and shrubs ring the perimeter. The well-ordered front garden is carefully planted too, around a neat, cobble-lock drive.

 A utility to the side of the house is shielded by trees and shrubbery.

Indoors is neat as a pin. Two reception rooms either side of the hallway overlook the front garden. 

Both are generous rooms. One opens to the open plan kitchen/dining/sunroom.

There are four double bedrooms in this 170 sq m bungalow, of which the main gained an en suite at the time the sunroom extension was done. It’s angled so that doors open onto the patio.

 Ms Healy points out that a Daikin air source heat pump was recently fitted (it runs on electricity) and that despite the house being close to 50 years old, it has a commendable C1 energy rating.

She adds that the house is on a terrifically private site, on a road where homes “rarely come up for sale”.

“This location is special and this house is an opportunity for a variety of buyers to acquire a home in the popular Ovens area,” Ms Healy says.

She is guiding the bungalow at €580,000.

Abbey Road is less than 10 minutes by car from the Ballincollig bypass and Killumney and Ovens villages are less than 5 km away.

VERDICT: An O’Flynn prototype that has stood the test of time. Lovely location.