To the manor born

WILL a private buyer come forward for Dromquinna Manor, one of the country’s finest waterfront homes?

It has see-sawed in the past from private residence to hotel use, and just might go back private again, says Dominic Daly, putting the Kenmare bay place on the international market with joint agents Knight Frank in the UK.

Dromquinna, built for Sir John Column, is on 40 acres of prime Ring of Kerry land, with three-quarters of a mile of shore frontage.

While a sale of the scenically set property was agreed a few years ago to a private Irish/international consortium, who planned to develop the grounds for time-share, the deal was never concluded and hit third party planning objections as well.

The packed property mix includes a 15'-high treehouse in the stump of a giant old cedar tree, with two bedrooms and a bathroom, a boathouse and pier, two private residences, a converted coach-house with 18 en suite bedrooms and the 1850-built Dromquinna Manor itself, with a further 28 bedrooms, bar and 70-seat restaurant/150-seat function room.

It has a €4 million-plus price expectation, but given the clique of very well-heeled millionaires already in situ and in blissful solitude along the shoreline of the bay a few miles west of Kenmare, it may well go to one of their ilk as a residential bolthole, with the lesser buildings removed.

Riverdance duo Moya Doherty and John Colgan, worth €150m or so between them, have a house near Kenmare, as well as their Howth mansion, Spanish retreat and other properties. Actor and ex-soccer star Vinnie Jones has bought, sold and bought again in the area, and there's always the rumour machine throwing up names like George Clooney, or even the latter day Lothario, Colin Farrell.

It may also appeal to the ego of a returning Irish emigrant who has done well overseas and wants to buy a prime bit of the Auld Sod.

When it last changed hands, "we bought it as a private house, but it just grew into a hotel," laughs UK-born Sue Robertson.

She, with her husband the late Mike Roberston, bought Dromquinna in 1988, after he retired from business in the UK, where he captained a chain of sprawling cheap and cheerful shops under the Trago brand name.

With his 'stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap' motto, he was a larger than life personality, who had amassed a personal fortune before handing the business to his sons he bought them real double-decker buses for their 10th birthdays.

Dromquinna, as a hotel, has his split personality: it was ideally pitched at an upmarket slice of life, but prices were fair and he loved to pack the place with people. The grounds were open season for picnics, it was like a public amenity for visitors to Kenmare, it was child-friendly to a fault (the open pier being a favourite hazard) it was Mike Robertson's personal playground.

Next, please.