Western beauty to seduce a celebrity
THE price guide is high, at €3.5 million, but there's quite a range of quality property in the mix at Blair's Cove, a hideaway on Dunmanus Bay one of the most westerly sun-set spots on the edge of Europe.
The well-known bayside restaurant and guest venue hit the property market last month, surprising and disappointing some of its elite and regular habitues especially as it is possibly going to be bought for private residential usage.
Ranged around a comfortably renovated Georgian residence and a courtyard, the beguiling collection of buildings includes four apartments, a detached cottage and a barn-sized stone building, currently the dining room for the award-winning restaurant.
The barn is 50' by 18', with exposed stone wall inside and out, and has double height ceilings and a full-length lean-to sun room: as an outside bet, if Blair's Cove is bought by some rock'n'roll money-bags, this is where the recording studio must go.
With its water-frontage and private grounds, it might suit discrete arrivals by boat, helicopter or sea-plane. Seeing as how John Travolta was in Shannon last month in his private jet, let's start the rumour here and now that he is a possible buyer. It is the silly summer season, after all.
The place last changed hands back in 1971, bought by the German parents of Sabine De May, who has run the restaurant here with her husband Philippe, from Belgium, since 1982.
There has been on-going investment, down with a measure of restrained good taste, veering towards the classic in the 1780s main four-bed residence, and back to the contemporary in the four guest apartments in the courtyard, and in the slightly removed four-bed guest cottage.
The whole place oozes atmosphere, inside and out, while the courtyard with its pond, slated, cobbled and paved areas, hedging and planting is a sun-trap ... at least when the sun hits this coastal retreat.
Location in just over an hour from Cork city and airport, about six miles from Bantry, and also nearby are the tourist honey-and-money spots of Durrus and Schull, with Crookhaven a little further out the Mizen Head peninsula.
While the country's scenic peninsulae in the south west are still largely unspoiled, their fame is wide, and the hinterland is home or a retreat to the rich and (in)famous.
While East Cork now holds the prize of being home to one of the country's most valuable private homes, Ballynatray, sold this year for €11 million-plus, West Cork has a fair scattering of houses which have made €2 to €3 million in the last couple of years and a few more still yet to sell price at up to €6 million.
Skibbereen-based estate agent Charles McCarthy, offering Blair's Cove by private treaty, has been involved in a number of the region's profile sales (for example, to Graham Norton, Carol Vorderman and partner Des Kelly, currently editor of the Daily Mirror, to Jeremy Irons and Greg Dyke, late of the BBC) and he says there will be a national and international demand for Blair's Cove from this ilk.
The entire enclave, suitable for an entourage, is on five acres of grounds with frontage and direct shore access with a shingle beach, with lots of mature planting of pines and native hardwoods.
A typing error on the suitably glossy sales brochure adds "situation south of Durrus village on a promentary on the western point of which there are the remains of an Irons Age fort." Irons Age? Must be Jeremy's castle near Ballydehob.
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