Buy into Noel’s experience

Tommy Barker says historic Dunowen House, will be well worth the money for any potential buyer.

THE former home of the late rock guitarist Noel Redding, of the Jimi Hendrix Experience band, is back on the property market for sale.

Two years ago Noel Redding made plans to sell his pad, the period Dunowen House. It hit the market in July 2002, but events overtook the process. He died unexpectedly a year last year leaving a silence and sadness among his eclectic circle of contacts.

He had decided to trade down to a smaller and more easily managed place after three decades in this rambling old place by the sea, at picturesque Sands Cove south of Clonakilty.

It initially carried a €650,000 guide price with joint Cork-Dublin agents, later a West Cork agent had instructions to sell for €1 million, and now as part of an executor sale it is likely to make around the €800,000-plus sought by Clonakilty agent Henry O’Leary.

He confidently and professionally stitches together the reasons why it will now sell for about this sum: he points to five acres of coastal West Cork land, a 5,000 sq ft residence with five bedrooms and packed with quirky features, a separate three-bed guest cottage and a stone-built old coach house with development potential.

Oh, and he adds: “to do all this in such a scenic location as picturesque Sands Cove is indeed an exceptional opportunity.”

Bass player Noel Redding and his then partner Carol Appleby came across Dunowen House on a winter Irish break in the early 1970s: it was, in fact, Christmas Day (his birthday, hence the ‘noel’) and even now it bears traces of faded - very faded - rock and roll grandeur.

Redding had been shorn of his music publishing rights from his band days, and so a chunk of the $300m Jimi Hendrix Experience estate eluded him, and so there was never a pot of gold that could be lavished on ancient Dunowen House, portions of which reputedly dated back to 1680.

Repair work was done as necessary, but upgrades were done to a necessary budget - not to the current conservation standards.

Any new owners will have to spend handsomely on the main residence, but it will be worth doing it right - there’s so few houses of this vintage in the area.

It dates to two periods, with the older portion going as far back as the late 1600s, said to have been gifted to a Captain Sands by Cromwell for services to the Crown.

Sands is recalled in the naming of the nearby Sands Cove - ironically a stoney beach, and a spot which hosts an angling festival each Summer.

Features of the old two-storey and L-shaped house include some slate cladding, as well as unusual barrel vaulted ceilings at first floor level, and several of the main reception rooms open to a bright paved terrace complete with fig tree.

The property has promise and privacy thank to its five acres of grounds, it might have some commercial potential - guest accommodation or even destination restaurant.