Little and large: Meath pile and Lego-style house next door

When the owner of Kinmere, in Quarrylands, Co Meath, set about building a 557sq m (6,000sq ft) home on the busy road off the M3 between Dunboyne and Dunshaughlin, he and his wife must have been like children in a sweetshop. As founder and chairman of Glenbeigh Records Management and Glenbeigh Construction, Philip Earle’s passion is building.

“Myself and Caitríona sat down and designed the house from scratch the way we wanted it to work. Then our in-house design team carried out the project.” The Earles oversaw every step of the process, ensuring the best materials were used.

That was 2005, and what a difference a decade makes. The changing fortunes of the Irish economy saw the business diversify into the Middle East, and last year Glenbeigh built and opened a huge vaulted steel facility in Dubai, where 58 people are now employed. Now the Earles divide their time between Dublin and Dubai, and it is more practical to live in one of three penthouse apartments they own in Farmleigh, Castleknock.

ExpandAutoplay

Image 1 of 12

Kinmere in Quarrylands, Co Meath

Kinmere, on 2.5 acres (with a further 45 acres available to purchase if required) is on the market for €1.55 million through Knight Frank. Separately, on an adjoining acre, an energy efficient 153sq m (1,650sq ft) property is also on sale, for €525,000. It was built to a modular design by Glenbeigh in partnership with Trinity College Dublin.

Unique

The main property, Kinmere, is a unique modern build tailored to the owners’ tastes, with an abundance of natural light pouring through the unusual layout. More than 80 per cent of the rear elevation is glazed.

The six-bed house is designed around a central column, off which two wings rise all the way to a rooftop floor, which accommodates the vast master bedroom suite.

Crema marfil marble covers the floors and the central staircase, which rises up on two sides in an unusual butterfly design with steel railings. The rear of the house at ground level opens to a large open-plan kitchen-dining-living area almost entirely glazed on one side, with an impressive double-sided open fireplace and a double height atrium at its centre. The kitchen is a Houseworks Siematic with Miele appliances and an electric Aga. An integrated Bang and Olufson system provides the soundtrack. Each area has sliding doors to a sweep of patio centred by an ornamental pond leading to a thatched gazebo.

The private aspect overlooks sweeping countryside with wooden fencing marking out the property ’s 2.5 acres. A railed paddock is located a distance from the house, and the foreground is carefully landscaped to compliment the central tree-lined patio. Four double rooms on the first floor are larger than most master bedrooms, all en suite with walk-in wardrobes.

The master suite in turn has the size and dash of an upmarket hotel penthouse suite with a dedicated living area, fully kitted gym, his-and-hers walk-in wardrobes and double en-suite bathroom with sunken bath and his-and-hers wash-hand basins behind a glazed partition

Pitched roof

A separate, detached building with a pitched roof measures 200sq m (2,152sq ft). The exterior was finished to look like a stable block but it was originally conceived as a swimming pool. It’s in use as a double garage but the huge rear area is fully insulated and wired and could readily be converted to two-storey accommodation.

Kinmere is in the heart of prime horseracing and golfing country. From Dublin, it is less than 10 minutes from the M3 Ratoath/Fairyhouse exit, making it accessible to the city in about 30 minutes and close to Dublin airport.

“We absolutely loved living there,” Earle said this week from Dubai. “We would never have left except for the move to the Middle East, for the next five or six years anyway this is where we’ll have to focus a lot of our time.”

Trinity Haus: Low-carbon ‘adaptable’ home

From the early 2000s, Glenbeigh diversified into offsite construction, a unique building approach and a big interest area for founder Philip Earle.

It began as a storage system for the records business, but this evolved, and quickly Glenbeigh Construction secured contracts with the Department of Justice, the Prison Service and the OPW.

Glenbeigh’s ability to construct modular accommodation offsite meant it could quickly meet urgent housing needs, for example 350 asylum seekers were housed in Meelick, Co Limerick in just seven months using Glenbeigh’s system.

The units are built locally at Glenbeigh’s Damastown facility in modular block units – think Lego or Minecraft – and additional fully serviced rooms can be added or removed in a matter of days depending on requirements. In a commercial setting this greatly reduces onsite building costs and overheads.

As boom turned to bust Earle wanted to apply the building method in the residential sector, but he needed to build a showhouse/ prototype. At about the same time an opportunity arose to work with a Trinity College Dublin research group on developing a sustainably built “low-carbon adaptable” home.

The result, in 2011, was Trinity Haus, a 153sq m (1,650sq ft) property on just under an acre (adjacent to Kinmere) and now on the market for €525,000 through Knight Frank.

Trinity Haus is a comfortable three-bedroom family home but with some key differences. It has an A3 building energy rating (BER) and a comprehensive built-in energy monitoring system for the owners’ use only, now that the TCD research project is complete.

Latest building regulations require exacting levels of energy efficiency are more than satisfied by 0.8 U-value triple glazing, solar panel heating, a mechanical ventilation system and an insulated polystyrene foundation under the concrete to eliminate heat escape.

Completed to the highest spec to show that an energy efficient home could also be comfortable, a couple of high-end indulgences include a double-sided Jide stove, recessed LED lighting and underfloor heating that precluded the property from meeting full passive house standards. Marble floors complete the downstairs area, another add-on not typical of a regular three-bedroom build.

The panelised system means additional rooms can be added in just four days, and Earle believes the system fits well with domestic life cycles where people need bigger homes as their families expand, but like to downsize as the family grows up.

Glenbeigh now plans to launch its offsite construction residential model in Dubai and is currently sourcing a site on the extraordinary Palm archipelago to build a showhome similar to this one in Co Meath.

But at 4,000 sq ft, Earle says the bigger floor space is required to visually appeal to the supersized “bigger is better” UAE mentality.

However Earle envisages the homes’ strongest application will be as workforce accommodation.

“We would envisage rapid provision of mini-village accommodation for 500 workers with cinemas, retail and play areas.” Glenbeigh will self finance the build up to 30 per cent of the cost along with private equity investors, and then operate the sites on a leaseback basis.

On a commercial scale Glenbeigh’s panelised modular steel vaults – designed in Ireland – have taken off. “We can’t build them fast enough, and have just signed contracts with three banks, including one of the biggest operators out here.”Meanwhile, the original of the species – for residential use at least – awaits a buyer in Co Meath.