Dermot Bannon loves this Kerry cottage. See how it got its new lease of life

The opportunity arrived when she spotted a tumbledown 19th-century one-bedroom dwelling, five miles from Glenbeigh village, overlooking a Coomasaharn Lake. “The building was rundown but the location was amazing, and the view was amazing,” she says.

The cottage received architect Dermot Bannon’s seal of approval when it features on Dermot Bannon’s Super Spaces. “The scale of what they’ve done makes it a super space,” he says.

During filming, the architect takes an al-fresco dip, luxuriating in the outdoor tub, a fabulous affair, hewn of one piece of stone. "It was as secluded as you can get — with a camera crew staring at you!" he jokes. (Not to speak of the voyeuristic sheep that steals the spotlight while sneaking a peek in the episode.) 

Catherine was keen to create a spectacular small space: “We seem to put way too much space into houses when we’re building them; things we never had before — a cinema room, a games room,” she says. “For me, it was important to do a small space well rather than to have lots of space.”

Inspired by her brother Brian Spain, who had already restored a cottage nearby, she made her vision a reality. “Brian helped me, he had a great knowledge of building,” she says.

The family, originally from Blackrock in Dublin, always had strong ties with the area. “Brian and I grew up as part of six siblings,” says Catherine. “Our parents would bring us to stay for a month every summer to Dooks. 

"I’m very connected to Kerry and it was always a big part of our family holidays. I never wanted to leave when I was here. My younger sister used to cry every time she left. We all loved it.”

But it would be a few decades after childhood before Catherine and Brian would move to the Kingdom permanently. First, there were other adventures to pursue. “Brian and I ended up in business together, first when Brian opened a pub in Madrid,” says Catherine. The duo ran bars together in Spain and France, including an Irish pub in the centre of Paris, for many years. “It was fairly wild!” says Catherine.

Brian adds: “Catherine’s talent is she can dance on tables on a Saturday night but will get the books balanced on a Monday morning.”

The businessman has since opened an artisan bakery in Glenbeigh as well as restoring the Lost Cottage at nearby Caragh Lake. When Brian first heard the latter cottage was for sale and went to see it, he says: “People thought we were very very touched. It was very very rundown.”

But the simple palette and serene look he created impressed Catherine. “I always loved what Brian did with Lost Cottage and I was always interested in restoring a cottage myself,” she says.

She has succeeded in devising what she describes as a “contemporary rustic” revamp of Limehouse Cottage.

Catherine, who lives near Killorglin, completed the restoration of Limehouse Cottage in May 2022, with building restorer Henry Thompson, Old Builders, and Maxime La Roussi, Urban Agency Architects, on board. “We stripped it back to the four walls and started from there,” she says.

“When we saw the house, we didn’t think it was as old as it actually was, as it had cement plaster on it, but when that was stripped back to the stone, we found it actually it was a very old house underneath,” says Catherine.

The residence was originally built to house farmhands at one end and animals at the other. Nowadays it sleeps two people, with two "well-behaved dogs" on the guest list also, as a luxury self-catering rental, with Unique Homestays Uniquehomestays.

Old photographs of this once-thatched Irish cottage date back to the Famine times when it was razed in a fire.

Catherine paid €125,000 for the property but shelled out “multiples” of that in its restoration, she says. “I was buying a site, basically, because there was no bathroom — it was a very basic house. We were starting with a few walls,” she says.

Tenderly brought back to life, the cottage was reconstructed with local stone, lime-rendered and insulated in hemp so that it could breathe with the natural elements. “We had the windows reinstated to the size they would have been and we had it lime-plastered inside and outside, as lime plaster is the traditional plaster that would have been on a cottage like this," says Catherine.

The cottage has two modern extensions, one of which is based on a glass box extension on a house in Belgium. “From this, you can watch the drama of the weather blowing over the lake,” says Catherine.

Zesty citrus tones add warmth and materials have been sustainably sourced, such as the kitchen salvaged from London’s docklands. The open-plan living space centres around an open fire, with vaulted ceilings and wooden tie beams. In the curved-roof bathroom, a window runs the length of the bath allowing scents of the meadow to flow inside, from wildflowers to coriander.

• ‘Dermot Bannon’s Super Spaces’, episode two, is on Wednesday, September 11, at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and on RTÉ Player

• Limehouse Cottage can be rented for stays with Unique Homestays, Uniquehomestays