Wizard home requires a new owner’s magic touch

SHARING its name with a romantic historical novel, and with a Celtic rock band from Grimsby in Britain, is Merlin’s Keep — a prime Kinsale property in need of a wizard’s wand — or a sweeping brush and a rake.

The period-style house, right on the bustling tourist town’s Pier Road, promises more than a bed of roses — it has overgrown beds of roses, and other shrubs and trees, planted over decades in its lush front lawns.

There’s so much garden in front of the house, you’d be tempted to say Merlin’s Keep is more garden than house, but then that belies the fact that the building, now part house and six adjoining self-contained apartments, has no fewer than 12 bedrooms and eight bathrooms... all in need of upgrading.