Catch the turning tide

WITH a famous movie producer neighbour, a tidal estuary at the garden’s end plus a boathouse, pretty stables and an interior as stunning as its exterior, Tidewater Hideaway is very much in west Cork’s upper echelons.

A new market arrival, this is now a house to match its stunning Skibbereen site, just 200 yards upriver of the Oldcourt boatyard along the Baltimore Road.

Along with Baltimore itself four miles away, this is Skibbereen’s Golden Mile and its most famous resident is award-garlanded film producer David Puttnam, who made the west Cork movie War of the Buttons in 1994.

The Puttnams have a period house, a guest house, great gardens and a boathouse and jetty on their considerable waterside site, which perhaps gave some of the inspiration for Tidewater Hideaway.

Carrying a €1.2 million price guide with auctioneer Henry O’Leary, this re-modelled house, with its curving, wrap-around decking, also has a boathouse — more of a tea-house, really — and tidal jetty plus a mooring. When the tide’s right, you can whizz to Baltimore and Roaringwater Bay’s islands, or you can go the other way right up towards Skibbereen, two miles away, by RIB.

The mature and private site, bought a couple of years ago with an old style bungalow on it, was taken in charge by vendors Ken and Catherine O’Mahony, an easy-going couple who’ve fallen into a business of house renovations, project management and interior design.

They massively and expensively re-worked, extended and up-graded it, making the most of its setting and then putting in lots and lots of glass to get the views and the light.

They succeeded in spades, with the front all airy and bright. Then, with shades of Skibbereen’s movie moguls a la David Puttnam and Jeremy Irons, there’s a private home cinema at the rear. The seats, eight of them, were salvaged from an old county moviehouse which they re-upholstered and painted up.

Done to a T, the finished house has 3,500 sq ft of space over two levels, with great big open living rooms at both ground and first floor, opening to decking at the lower level and to a balcony upstairs.

The house has five bedrooms, four bathrooms, including two en suites, and finish quality and decor throughout is high, with a distinct nautical theme to it all.

The O’Mahony’s say they based the house feel on places they’ve seen and visited in the US and Australia, and in pride of place on the deck by the kitchen is a fully plumbed barbecue unit, the length of most people’s kitchen worktops.

The party-friendly property is on almost two acres, with a long site sloping down from the road and then levelling out along the lawns to the water’s edge.