About Us
Ballyvolane House is our home as well as our family business, and we think that combination is a large part of what makes staying here feel different.
We - Justin and Jenny Green - both come from hospitality backgrounds and spent many years working internationally before returning to Ballyvolane. Between us, our experience includes the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, The Legian Bali and Jumeirah Beach Hotel in Dubai. Before coming home, Justin was General Manager of Babington House in Somerset.
Jenny grew up in Hong Kong and spent much of her early life in Asia, so she still occasionally scratches her head and wonders quite how she ended up in rural North Cork. Fortunately, she seems to have adapted rather well.
Justin is also Chair of Historic Houses of Ireland, which represents privately owned historic houses and works to support their conservation and long-term viability.
He also co-founded Bertha’s Revenge Gin with Antony Jackson. For ten years, the distillery operated from the old farmyard at Ballyvolane House and became very much part of the life and story of the estate. The business has recently been sold, although Justin and Antony retain a small shareholding, and Bertha cocktails remain an important part of life here - particularly as a pre-dinner tipple.
One especially memorable moment came in 2018, when King Charles III and Queen Camilla - then The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall - stayed at Ballyvolane during their visit to Cork.
Above all, we want Ballyvolane to offer an authentic travel experience: the chance to stay in a real Irish country house that is still a family home.
Communal dining is a big part of that. Guests often gather around the same table, sharing food, stories and conversation. For us, the connections made around the dinner table are what travel is really about - meeting people you might never otherwise have met and leaving with memories that go far beyond the place itself.
The team
Ballyvolane simply wouldn’t be Ballyvolane without the wonderful team who work alongside us across the house, kitchen, gardens, grounds and events.
Many have been here for years and know the place inside out. A special mention must go to Bernie, Alistair and Mairéad, who have each been part of Ballyvolane for decades.
The Greens of Ballyvolane
The present house was built by the Pyne family, who lived here until 1953, when it was bought by Cyril Hall Green - universally known as Squirrel - and his wife Joyce, née Blake, following their return from Malaya.
Squirrel had spent much of his working life managing rubber plantations there. Ballyvolane later passed to his son Jeremy, who ran the estate as a mixed tillage and dairy farm.
In the 1980s, Jeremy and his wife Merrie began moving gradually from farming into hospitality, welcoming paying guests - or “PGs”, as they were often called then - and becoming founding members of Hidden Ireland.
Merrie was a fanatical salmon angler, and many of those early guests came specifically to fish. Ballyvolane operated several beats on the River Blackwater and employed a team of ghillies to guide visiting anglers. Salmon fishing was a huge part of Justin’s childhood.
Sadly, wild Atlantic salmon numbers have declined dramatically and the angling tourism that once played such an important role here has largely disappeared. We miss it. The salmon is deeply woven into Irish culture and folklore - and, on a less profound note, wild salmon is absolutely delicious.
Justin grew up at Ballyvolane with his two brothers, Sebastian and Adam, and all three remain part of the wider family story of the house.
Following Merrie’s death, Justin and Jenny returned to Ballyvolane in 2004 to take over the house and business. For many years it remained a wonderfully multi-generational home. Justin’s maternal grandparents, Wendy and Ian, lived at Tim’s House, while his paternal grandmother Joyce lived upstairs in the wing of the main house in what was affectionately known as “Granny’s back end”. Joyce lived to the remarkable age of 103.
Together with our children - Toby, Jamie and Fleur - and Philippa Dacres Dixon, Jeremy’s life partner for the final 17 years of his life, there was a time when ten members of the family lived across the Ballyvolane estate. Luckily, we all got along brilliantly.
Philippa passed away in March 2025 and Jeremy in December of the same year.
After we returned in 2004, Jeremy devoted himself to the gardens, restoring the lakes, enlarging many areas and planting for the future. Over the following two decades the gardens flourished under his care and have never looked better. They are a particularly beautiful part of his legacy.
Keeping the roof on
Keeping a historic house going means adapting.
Since 2004, we have diversified into weddings, glamping, gin distilling, a music festival and even a driven game shoot, alongside accommodation and events. Some ventures lasted, some evolved and some ran their course, but all played their part in keeping the roof on.
We have also had the enormous pleasure of hosting Love Is A Stranger - the little sister of Another Love Story - an intimate music festival bringing together live music, DJs, food and drink across the house, gardens, farmyard and barns.
It has been a wonderfully positive experience and a reminder of how naturally historic houses and their landscapes lend themselves to cultural events. There is something magical about music drifting across an old farmyard and seeing familiar buildings and gardens come alive in an entirely different way.
The next chapter
Like many small hospitality businesses, we are facing rising wage, tax, energy, food and operating costs at the same time as the cost-of-living crisis puts pressure on our guests.
So Ballyvolane is changing again.
Our focus is moving towards private house stays and residential retreats - welcoming families, groups of friends, companies, facilitators and retreat organisers to take over the house and enjoy Ballyvolane at a more relaxed and immersive pace.
It feels like a natural next chapter: fewer large-scale events and more time spent doing what Ballyvolane has always done best - bringing people together and looking after them well.
Ballyvolane at 300
In 2028 Ballyvolane House will celebrate its 300th anniversary, having been built in 1728.
We intend to mark the tercentenary properly, with a series of events throughout the year - some historical, some celebratory and, knowing Ballyvolane, probably a few that are rather harder to categorise.
It will be a chance to celebrate the house, the families and people who have shaped it, the landscape and community around it, and the next chapter in Ballyvolane’s story.