Beach-side luxury
Why not buy your very own beach-side luxury hide-away, complete with helicopter pad, personal gym, games room, infinity swimming pool, sauna and steam room? And, for most of the year, you can call the beach on your doorstep your own too.
Welcome to Pebble Beach, Ardmore, a Munster/Irish Atlantic holiday home with a difference. A big difference, in fact, and not just because of its price tag of €3 million. It has an appeal to the jet-set, to the manor-born set and to the helicopter borne too.
One man’s personal vision, it is a US-styled seaside home transplanted to an Irish base. As its vendor George Couri says “you won’t find a house much like it in the States, right on a beach in a beauty spot, with no neighbours to either side and no chance of any more planning permissions being given out here either.”
He got permission to build only because he was replacing another, earlier house on the exact same footprint. Even the retaining garden walls and terraces predate this building, and though it packs in around 6,000 sq ft of space it is relatively unobtrusive thanks to its low-slung siting.
It is single storey, and so is tucked almost out of sight of those passing by the coastal road above it, a field away. There are two public access points to the beach here, a mile or so from Ardmore’s main beach, but it isn’t a busy bathing spot, save for the odd fine Bank Holiday weekend.
The owners of Pebble Beach look at, but haven’t much touched or immersed themselves in the Atlantic Ocean right on their boundary. Though, as the family here warmly note of their plush, deck-flush indoor infinity pool, “when you swim in the heated pool and the tide is in, you feel you are swimming out to sea.”
Selling agent Brian Gleeson floats this particular anchored, Curragh Beach boat out at€3 million, and says “it offers phenomenal residential and leisure opportunities, it is an award-winning architectural-designed property boasting unrivalled ‘fish eye’ views.” Local builder Doc Moloney and an experienced crew built the 6,000 sq ft one-off, solidly placed on 70 deep piles, with storm-proof glazing, and it has curved stone walls running though its mid-ships as a design feature. These continue and cut up through the German-sourced flat roof material: from outside, it has the effect of visually lessening the apparent depth of this long, low home, though the masons must have blessed each stone they had to dress by hand.
All four bedrooms are en suite, and the master suite and main guest suite (at the very opposite, front ends of the house) are large affairs, each with inset wall-mounted gas fires and each has French doors to the terraces for al fresco breakfasting.
The central theme is the equivalent of a private leisure centre at its core, with pool, large Jacuzzi hot tub, steam room, sauna and changing room.
Several rooms spin off and overlook over the pool area for security’s sake, so keep the tummy tucked in when parading around......though the temptations of the kitchen might incline waist-bands to relax even further.
That kitchen is a real quality job, known to several catering firms from Cork and Waterford who’ve cooked for parties of up to 50 guests, and a design feature is a breakfast bar made of stainless steel and glass panels lit from within. It is indeed a house designed to share and enjoy. Cooking is done around solid oak units, black granite tops, and major appliances are by Vikings, brought in from the US, as was much of the furniture, sanitary ware, tiles. Even the interior decorators, Interior Design Force, came from New York.
The kitchen/dining/sitting area bathes in light from sky and sea, all laid out to draw in the sea-changing and weather-focused views, and the sitting room has a large open fire for evening comfort.
Other rooms include utility room, storage rooms, laundry area and the plant/engine room for the house and pool heating. For the security conscious, it all comes with full alarm, CCTV system, intercom system, flood-lighting over the beach (OK, not so unintrusive), while the ‘boys’ toys quotient level is kept high with built-in speakers, individual sound/TV systems in each room, and quad bikes in the attached garage near the helicopter landing pad (also see story p1.)
“Superlatives don’t describe Pebble Beach. Unique, amazing and spectacular are over-utilised words in the selling of property,” says Brian Gleeson, a man generally well able to coin a phrase as he also doubles up as a racing commentator on RTE. “However, such words would never be more apt to describe Pebble Beach, it is a special home, never to be repeated,” he enthuses.
Vendor George Couri came here when he took over Youghal Carpets production (Youghal’s one-time MD Ed Coree was a previous owner of the last Pebble Beach house too) and opened his own Couristan Carpets business in East Cork.
Pebble Beach comes ready to walk into, with the softest, and very best, of his carpets underfoot, included in the sale. Some pile, indeed.
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