You’d be stone mad not to fall in love with Carrig Beg

A CERTAIN, stone-faced look crept into rural sited homes across Ireland in the 1990s — and many would credit a west Cork builder Vincent Coughlan with popularising — if not even kick-starting — the trend in the 1980s.

Part-inspired by a couple of German architects in the region at the time, Coughlan fuelled the movement to finishing houses in locally sourced stone, and the Ballydehob/Schull area is sort of its spiritual home, where a lot of houses have this imprint, or are influenced by what he built (and often for Continental buyers.)

A west Cork house which bears all the hallmarks of the style is Carrig Beg, at Gortnarough, four miles inland from Ballydehob.