Couple fall for €4m Kinsale home

IT’S love, but not as most of us could afford to express it.

A €4m house purchase will see the new owners of Kinsale’s unique Pallace Wharf take possession on February 14 - St Valentine’s Day. Chocolates, flowers and lingerie pale in comparison.

The wealthy Dublin couple, whose identity is as yet undisclosed, plan to relocate here. They viewed the 5,300 square feet house, a 160-year-old converted fish store, at picturesque Scilly Dock in November, and fell in love with it.

Ironically, the property had been on the market throughout last summer, with a steep €4.3 million guide price.

For decades the property was a roofless and derelict fish warehouse. But the sweet, multi-million euro deal has been on the cards since early December, and the ‘Sale Agreed’ sign went up yesterday on the highly visible waterside site.

The sale, believed to be more than €4 million, is probably the highest price ever paid for a Munster property without amount of land or further development potential, says estate agent Pam Norris of Sheehy Brothers (jointly with Hamilton Osborne King, and Knight Frank in London). The niche buyer had been looking for a world-class home in the area.

There’d been some overseas and local interest, but no other formal bids.

“Some Cork people viewed it and said they’d wait for the price to come down - that was never going to happen,” said Ms Norris.

This record price puts Kinsale back in Munster’s pole property position.

On the day of their first viewing, the auctioneer’s car was being serviced, so she was reduced to using a bike and taking lifts: “We had a laugh over that, and we got on well straightaway,” she said yesterday.

Pallace Wharf is a restored 5,300 square feet home, with five en-suite bedrooms, on a small, but perfectly formed site featuring sentinel Cedar of Lebanon trees, on Kinsale’s Scilly Dock.

It has been converted and conserved to world-class standards with respect for old materials and modern technology integrated by developer Richard Good-Stephenson. He runs the building conservation company Lochplace, and he also restored old sheds behind this modestly-palatial Pallace Wharf home into three townhouses. These were sold separately, totalling more than €2m.

He said that the Pallace Wharf sale shows that there is now an appreciative Irish market for houses restored with integrity.

“There’s no excuse anymore for putting plastic windows in period homes,” he asserted, with this sale the proof of his assertion that people will pay for quality.

“Pallace Wharf is completely unique, you’ll never get the chance to build anything like this in such a setting again,” said Mr Good-Stephenson. He won an An Taisce medal for the salvation of Cor Castle in Innishannon, which is now his own family home.