Queue to join the bidding for Crewe

DON the wellies - you’ll need them for your trophy hobby farm and seashore paddling.

A hot West Cork farm property on the shores of Crewe Bay is likely to see local farmers and bidders facing well-heeled and wellie-heeled opposition from far afield.

Up for sale with Skibbereen agent Charles McCarthy is an 80-acre residential farm holding at Gubbeen, a townland known for its artisan cheese production.

It is described as being a mile west of Schull - but that’s a mile as the crow might fly or an auctioneer might wing it. By road, it feels a bit longer but, then again, it is the sort of place where distance from the madding crowd is a bonus.

This farm holding, now an executor’s sale, includes a sizeable old farmhouse that needs work, a second, smaller dwelling, old courtyard buildings and other ruins. In other words, lots of potential, and lots of money that could be spent.

Guide price with Mr McCarthy is in excess of €800,000, and given the Chiantishire cachet of Schull, that surely will be surpassed.

It is being offered all in one lot, but, with its several old and ruined stone buildings scattered about, is the sort of purchase a canny buyer might subsequently and profitably separate into small sections - or else just revel in.

There’s several hundred feet of water frontage and direct private access to the tidal mudflats/bay. The holding is divided by two roads, with very considerable road frontage as a result. Several small lots/sites mid-ships have already been hived off prior to sale, to local buyers.

The 80 acres of land is mostly in pasture, and some is in need of reclamation. The contrast between the hard farming life its previous owners had and the ease of impending machinery arriving for renovations and “improvements” is as wide as Crewe Bay.