AFTER a tumultuous couple of years, including a marriage breakdown and living in rented accommodation, carpenter Ger Ring, a divorced dad of three, upped tools, bought a plot of land, and started the process of building a home he could be proud of. "It was a very big mountain to climb, but it was something I wanted to do for myself and for my kids. It's a house built with love," Ger says.
The project started in 2019 when he bought a site on Upper Mill Road, a few minutes' drive from Midleton town centre. Its proximity to the Owenacurra River underpinned his decision. "I am someone who needs to be close to water, and at that site, there's a beautiful bend in the river.
My plan was to build a deck cantilevered out over it," he says. He recalled when he saw the site what a fortune teller had said to him many years previously. "I think she called herself Gypsy Lee and she had a caravan in Blackpool.
I remember going to her once and she told me to build a house on land 'where the river runs through it'." He laughs at the memory now, but it stuck with him. Before any building could commence however, the site had to be cleared.
"The first day I walked into it, I couldn't get more than 10ft in. To get any further, you needed a chainsaw. It was completely overgrown," Ger says.
The workmen who helped clear the site felt everything should go, including two majestic Monterey Pine trees, more common to the fog belts of coastal California than East Cork. Ger resisted the calls to level the remarkable evergreen conifers — a decision now vindicated. Monteray Pines are glorious by day and by night They're a standout feature in the meticulously landscaped 0.
7 acre grounds of Capri Lodge, where Ger, with the help of a good friend and garden hobbyist, planted more than 120 varieties of trees, flowers, and shrubs. Close runners-up in the attention-grabbing stakes are the cluster of Scots Pine conifers to the rear, now part of neighbouring land, after Ger split the site and..
. Catherine Shanahan Pictures: John Finn.
