Island-set home owned by nuns sells for €700k

An island-set West Cork period home owned by nuns for 50 years, used for novices of an enclosed order in the 1960s and enjoyed by youth groups on retreat more recently, sold at auction for €700,000.

Inchydoney House, on Inchydoney island near Clonakilty, had over 50 viewings from romantics and realists, thanks to a low initial €400,000 guide price, but was bought for the more hard-nosed €700k sum yesterday after three bidders went in spirited pursuit of the 1790s Georgian home on six acres with walled garden, a five minute hill walk from famed golden beaches, a top spa hotel and the so-called Virgin Mary sand-bank.

Originally a 1790s-built 5,000 sq ft Georgian house of the Hungerford landlord family, it is going to need renewal and cash lavished on it, but, in its 1960s heyday “was just a heavenly place”, said Presentation Order nun Sr Lelia Finn who, as a teenage novice in 1963, spent a summer of freedom on Inchydoney Island among her fledgling, and clothed from head to toe in religious garb, sisters-to-be.

Sr Lelia was one of a half a dozen or so nuns from the Order at South Presentation Convent on Cork City’s Douglas Street — including Sisters Marie Wall and Sr Mary Kelliher — to yesterday witness the auction end of an era, and the passage of summers on innocent fun “which was just heavenly, on the beach and in the meadows” and relative freedom from heavy habits.

When the order bought Inchydoney House in 1963, some of the older nuns had not been (or been seen) outside the Douglas Street convent in decades, they recalled as the order’s enclosure only ended in 1967. And, when the novices wanted to swim, and disrobe, it had to be early in the morning on Inchydoney beach over the dunes, before day-trippers came on the white sands, now overlooked by a five-star hotel and spa.

Estate agent John Hodnett of Hodnett Forde used his professional gavel at Inchydoney Island Hotel yesterday to hammer home the change from God to Mammon, netting the order €700,000 as he sorted out the three bidders.

The buyer, who asked not to be identified, is an engineer/builder who said it (and its 1.7 acre walled garden) would be renovated at a cost of up to €1 million, as a private home, and restored to former glories.