A Baltimore man has lovingly renovated a farmhouse and milking stall that have been in his family since the 1800s, with incredible results, writes EMMA CONNOLLY.
This article was featured in our Property West Cork Winter 2024 supplement – you can read the full supplement here!
TIM Minihane grew up in a house adjacent to these old buildings and painstakingly restored them into a thriving Airbnb rental, while maintaining strong ties to the past.
Barbara, Oisin and Tim Minihane (right of pic) with Kieran McCarthy, engineer and presenter of RTÉ’s Cheap Irish Homes. The renovation was a featured segment on the current series of the popular programme.
‘My father would have been born in the farmhouse and would have lived there until he was nine in 1934, before moving to the house I grew up in,’ he said.
When Tim was growing up, the farmhouse was used for storage, and the milk stall was vacant after the last cows were milked there in 1999.
‘Bit by bit they deteriorated over the years, but there was so much history attached to them that I simply couldn’t let them go into complete ruin on my watch. I felt that I was just a custodian of them and I had to do my bit to futureproof them for the next generation,’ he said.
Tim certainly did that, and more, with the help of his family, in particular his brother Danny, a builder and his nephew Ian.
Embarking on the restoration and renovation project in 2002, he undertook work on the two-storey farmhouse initially. The downstairs is now a spacious living room and he added on an extension at the back to accommodate a stairs, a charming double-height reading room and a front porch. Upstairs there are two bedrooms and a bathroom.
The second phase was the milking stall. ‘This was in really bad condition. We retained the gables but that was really it. We kept the same footprint and used the space for a large kitchen and an en-suite bedroom,’ he said.
Tim has cleverly included many interior features and touches that give a hint to the history and past uses of the building.
‘Old buildings like this have so many unique features like small, uneven windows and big stone walls and you just don’t see any of that now. I kept as many of those features as I could including what’s known as a ‘stillion’, a cubby hole in the wall which would have been used to keep jugs of milk cool, he explained.
There’s also a quirky chandelier made from a milking machine cluster (exactly what the name suggests!) in what was the old milk stall, and a dressing table made from a hay feeder.
‘That’s in the downstairs bedroom where cattle would have been so it’s just a nice link to the past. We also have a dresser made by my father when he would have been 15 in school in Skibbereen. It actually featured in “The Irish Dresser Project” by folklorist Michael Fortune and we have a framed poster explaining all that on the wall beside the dresser for guests to read.’
Tim married his wife Barbara, from Leap, in 2010 – the same year the project was completed.
They’re parents to Oisín and just like his grandad, he lived in the building until he was nine.
The family moved just down the yard to the recently renovated main farm house in 2022 where Tim’s dad had been living up to when he passed away in 2017.
Tim and Barbara are just winding up a very busy season of Airbnb rentals, hosting guests from all over Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, France and the US.
‘Not only do guests get to stay in an authentic Irish farmhouse but they also get to see how a farm is run, see our cows, our chickens, collect eggs, pick potatoes,’ he said.
‘We’ve had kids come that have never seen calves or chickens in their lives and they’re just enthralled by it! They don’t want to leave the place! We’ve also had cousins visit from the US who stayed in the bedroom their mother would have been born in which was very special,’ he said.
Tim’s total spend on the project was a very modest €74,000.
Not being in ‘any panic’ to get the work done gave him the freedom to pick up bargains along the way including second-hand windows and an end-of-line kitchen.
‘When I was doing up the house there weren’t any grants available but my advantage was that I could sit things out and keep an eye out for deals which really paid off and I also had great help from family which kept the costs down,’ he said.
The property means the family now has an alternative income stream when they rent it from Easter to the end of summer.
Tim is a beef farmer with 40 acres, and also works off-farm as an estate manager.
‘It’s been a great way to diversify on the farm, and in many ways it’s helped to save our farm and justify keeping it going,’ he said.
But it hasn’t been just about creating revenue, he said. It’s been much more than that, and a real labour of love.
‘I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved and the best part is the fact that the building is safe now for the next generation.’
• Follow ‘The Old Milking Stall’ on Instagram for more.
This photo from the early days of the project gives a sense of what the buildings were like.
The old milking stall during renovations.
An old hay feeder repurposed as a corner shelf.
The ‘stillion’ – a feature of the old milking parlour in which a recess in the thick wall was used as a cool storage space for milk.
The dining room featuring a rather unique light fixture made from a milking cluster.
One of the bedrooms incorporates part of the old wall – now cleverly used as stepped shelving.
