Shouldered by Mount Leinster and resting at the end of a crawling driveway framed by a paddock where horses graze, Sandbrook House cannot help but command attention. Classically double-fronted, classically Georgian and classically country, the 1780s period home speaks for itself.
Upon arrival, Irish Country Living is greeted not only by Bella and Christopher Bielenberg – the owners of Sandbrook House and the couple behind its charm – but also a bride, groom and their family who have just flown in from Missouri to get married here. We are swept up in a flurry of activity as they haul their luggage up the steps, including the wedding dress, and begin setting up; and it is a scene with all the breathless energy of an F Scott Fitzergald novel transported to the Carlow countryside.
When asked if it’s a typical day at Sandbrook, Bella pauses. “Well, a typical day looked like today until I woke up and the dishwasher had flooded, so we swapped it for a new one, I took my stepmother around Arboretum Gardens, then youarrived, they arrived – everyone came at once. Actually, days are a bit like that.”
Bella tells us that there are another four weddings booked this summer, with brides travelling from around the world.
It makes sense – the place is stunning, but also convenient. Sandbrook is just over one hour from Dublin Airport and close to the Wexford ferry crossings. The wedding venue, Ballykealy House, is just down the road “but they can also have the ceremony here as we are licensed,” Bella adds.
Weddings aside, it is intimate gatherings and intergenerational family reunions that Sandbrook majors in. Sleeping 31 people, families can rent the property for special occasions. “Dad’s 70th or somebody’s 50th, we’ve got a lot of those,” says Bella.
Christopher and Bella Bielenberg at Sandbrook House, Co Carlow
with their dog Delphi. \Justin Lynch
On a tour of the house, there’s detail and beauty in every corner but also you get the sense of visiting the home of an old friend. “I think my obsession is that when people come in, that it should feel like their home, because we live in it. I like it to feel like a generous place,” she says.
An interior designer by trade, Bella started out her career at 18 working at British Vogue. Her background in art reflects throughout the house, and she has done all of the embellishment. “I’m a textile fiend,” she admits, almost like a self-confession. “I see something, and I know exactly where it’s going to go, so it means I’m slightly obsessive,” she says with a laugh.
Passing through the sitting room, she adds, “A lot of what it is in here came from London” – and then it’s onto the kitchen, which has a real country feel.
“Everything is really precious,” Bella explains, pointing out a yellow plate made by her daughter’s best friend, another from a man in Cork and one that Delphi the dog smashed in half, but that a potter friend in London mended.
The stylistic décor of the house comes from all over. “I’m a huge one for dragging things everywhere, and I hate waste,” says Bella.
The art work belongs to Christopher though.
“I collected all the pictures in the house over time,” he says, “travelling to different parts of the world. I used to do lots of galleries in New York and collected quite eccentric pictures of one kind or another.”
Sandbrook House has many unique features.
Historical connections
The house has some lovely features, including four fireplaces. Walking from room to room, one cannot help but notice a lot of lamps. When this is noted to Bella, she laughs: “I love lamps. All my lamps come from all over the place, we got them from funny little places along the way.” She is planning to host lampshade painting workshops in the autumn.
The structure of the house is only one room deep and it flows like one long corridor with light streaming in from both sides. “Originally the central part of the house, which would have consisted of the hall and the two side rooms, was built about 1720,” says Christopher. “Then the two wings and back bit was added on in the 1840s.”
The most recent addition to the property is a new loft space that Christopher and Bella created three years ago. It backs onto the house and is where the couple sometimes stay if there are guests. Although it is relatively new, it is decorated like it has been there forever.
Each room of the house has been decorated by the Bielenbergs.
Sandbrook has had several owners over the years, including retired British army officers who served in World War I and World War II. When Christopher first met Bella, he had been living in Sandbrook 28 years and running it as a guest house for 15 years.
His connection to Carlow, though, runs deeper – having grown up just down the road in Munney House.
Christopher was born in 1942 in the middle of the bombing in Berlin, but his Anglo-Irish mother [Christabel] and German father [Peter] moved him and his brothers to Ireland in 1947.
The family story is recounted in his mother’s bestselling book, The Past Is Myself, which details Christabel’s experiences of living in Nazi Germany, including her husband’s imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp.
“My father spent the last nine months of the war in prison in Germany,” says Christopher. “He was involved peripherally in the assassination attempt to kill Hitler. He remained in Germany until the beginning of 1946 because he was working with the allies as a lawyer on the denazification process. “My father clearly couldn’t get a job as a German in Britain in 1947/48 and they had the idea of returning to Ireland, where my mother had lots of connections and friends,” says Christopher.
Sandbrook House Gardens in full bloom.
Christopher’s parents borrowed money to buy Munney House and decided to turn their hand to see whether they could farm.
“So my father is a farmer converted from being a lawyer.”Christopher went on to set up his own management consulting company, a career which took him all around the world. In 1997, he returned to Carlow and bought Sandbrook House to be closer to his ageing parents. He has lived there ever since. In addition to running Sandbrook House, Christopher leads an NGO (non-governmental organization), called Alma Mater Education through which he set up Wioso Senior High School in Ghana.
“We took in the first 100 kids in October 2015, and we have now 420 secondary school kids all from the local area. They are getting phenomenal results in terms of exams and if they can afford it, they can go on to study. We have some people studying nursing, midwifery, medicine, others doing agricultural sciences and environmental sciences. It’s been a phenomenal success.”
Our tour of Sandbrook House ends in the garden, awash with pinks and purples, old fashioned roses and lilac-hued foxgloves. It is perhaps this part of Sandbrook that Bella is most taken with. “I’m a haphazard gardener,” she says. “I sort of throw stuff in, and I’ve got this wonderful gardener who comes once a week and every time I arrive with new stuff, he’ll say, ‘but there’s no room’. I say, ‘there’s plenty of room, there’s a bit there, we can plant it there,’” Bella laughs. “I believe that gardens are never finished.”
And just like in the garden, there is always a job to be done in Sandbrook, “but it’s worth it”, says Bella.
Sandbrook House open the gardens to the public by appointment.See sandbrookhouse.ie and almamatereducation.org
Shouldered by Mount Leinster and resting at the end of a crawling driveway framed by a paddock where horses graze, Sandbrook House cannot help but command attention. Classically double-fronted, classically Georgian and classically country, the 1780s period home speaks for itself.
Upon arrival, Irish Country Living is greeted not only by Bella and Christopher Bielenberg – the owners of Sandbrook House and the couple behind its charm – but also a bride, groom and their family who have just flown in from Missouri to get married here. We are swept up in a flurry of activity as they haul their luggage up the steps, including the wedding dress, and begin setting up; and it is a scene with all the breathless energy of an F Scott Fitzergald novel transported to the Carlow countryside.
When asked if it’s a typical day at Sandbrook, Bella pauses. “Well, a typical day looked like today until I woke up and the dishwasher had flooded, so we swapped it for a new one, I took my stepmother around Arboretum Gardens, then youarrived, they arrived – everyone came at once. Actually, days are a bit like that.”
Bella tells us that there are another four weddings booked this summer, with brides travelling from around the world.
It makes sense – the place is stunning, but also convenient. Sandbrook is just over one hour from Dublin Airport and close to the Wexford ferry crossings. The wedding venue, Ballykealy House, is just down the road “but they can also have the ceremony here as we are licensed,” Bella adds.
Weddings aside, it is intimate gatherings and intergenerational family reunions that Sandbrook majors in. Sleeping 31 people, families can rent the property for special occasions. “Dad’s 70th or somebody’s 50th, we’ve got a lot of those,” says Bella.
Christopher and Bella Bielenberg at Sandbrook House, Co Carlow
with their dog Delphi. \Justin Lynch
On a tour of the house, there’s detail and beauty in every corner but also you get the sense of visiting the home of an old friend. “I think my obsession is that when people come in, that it should feel like their home, because we live in it. I like it to feel like a generous place,” she says.
An interior designer by trade, Bella started out her career at 18 working at British Vogue. Her background in art reflects throughout the house, and she has done all of the embellishment. “I’m a textile fiend,” she admits, almost like a self-confession. “I see something, and I know exactly where it’s going to go, so it means I’m slightly obsessive,” she says with a laugh.
Passing through the sitting room, she adds, “A lot of what it is in here came from London” – and then it’s onto the kitchen, which has a real country feel.
“Everything is really precious,” Bella explains, pointing out a yellow plate made by her daughter’s best friend, another from a man in Cork and one that Delphi the dog smashed in half, but that a potter friend in London mended.
The stylistic décor of the house comes from all over. “I’m a huge one for dragging things everywhere, and I hate waste,” says Bella.
The art work belongs to Christopher though.
“I collected all the pictures in the house over time,” he says, “travelling to different parts of the world. I used to do lots of galleries in New York and collected quite eccentric pictures of one kind or another.”
Sandbrook House has many unique features.
Historical connections
The house has some lovely features, including four fireplaces. Walking from room to room, one cannot help but notice a lot of lamps. When this is noted to Bella, she laughs: “I love lamps. All my lamps come from all over the place, we got them from funny little places along the way.” She is planning to host lampshade painting workshops in the autumn.
The structure of the house is only one room deep and it flows like one long corridor with light streaming in from both sides. “Originally the central part of the house, which would have consisted of the hall and the two side rooms, was built about 1720,” says Christopher. “Then the two wings and back bit was added on in the 1840s.”
The most recent addition to the property is a new loft space that Christopher and Bella created three years ago. It backs onto the house and is where the couple sometimes stay if there are guests. Although it is relatively new, it is decorated like it has been there forever.
Each room of the house has been decorated by the Bielenbergs.
Sandbrook has had several owners over the years, including retired British army officers who served in World War I and World War II. When Christopher first met Bella, he had been living in Sandbrook 28 years and running it as a guest house for 15 years.
His connection to Carlow, though, runs deeper – having grown up just down the road in Munney House.
Christopher was born in 1942 in the middle of the bombing in Berlin, but his Anglo-Irish mother [Christabel] and German father [Peter] moved him and his brothers to Ireland in 1947.
The family story is recounted in his mother’s bestselling book, The Past Is Myself, which details Christabel’s experiences of living in Nazi Germany, including her husband’s imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp.
“My father spent the last nine months of the war in prison in Germany,” says Christopher. “He was involved peripherally in the assassination attempt to kill Hitler. He remained in Germany until the beginning of 1946 because he was working with the allies as a lawyer on the denazification process. “My father clearly couldn’t get a job as a German in Britain in 1947/48 and they had the idea of returning to Ireland, where my mother had lots of connections and friends,” says Christopher.
Sandbrook House Gardens in full bloom.
Christopher’s parents borrowed money to buy Munney House and decided to turn their hand to see whether they could farm.
“So my father is a farmer converted from being a lawyer.”Christopher went on to set up his own management consulting company, a career which took him all around the world. In 1997, he returned to Carlow and bought Sandbrook House to be closer to his ageing parents. He has lived there ever since. In addition to running Sandbrook House, Christopher leads an NGO (non-governmental organization), called Alma Mater Education through which he set up Wioso Senior High School in Ghana.
“We took in the first 100 kids in October 2015, and we have now 420 secondary school kids all from the local area. They are getting phenomenal results in terms of exams and if they can afford it, they can go on to study. We have some people studying nursing, midwifery, medicine, others doing agricultural sciences and environmental sciences. It’s been a phenomenal success.”
Our tour of Sandbrook House ends in the garden, awash with pinks and purples, old fashioned roses and lilac-hued foxgloves. It is perhaps this part of Sandbrook that Bella is most taken with. “I’m a haphazard gardener,” she says. “I sort of throw stuff in, and I’ve got this wonderful gardener who comes once a week and every time I arrive with new stuff, he’ll say, ‘but there’s no room’. I say, ‘there’s plenty of room, there’s a bit there, we can plant it there,’” Bella laughs. “I believe that gardens are never finished.”
And just like in the garden, there is always a job to be done in Sandbrook, “but it’s worth it”, says Bella.
Sandbrook House open the gardens to the public by appointment.See sandbrookhouse.ie and almamatereducation.org
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