Catch of week in Kinsale

BUILT 140 years ago to save souls, Kinsale’s Fisherman’s Hall has been born again, several times over.

Erected as a place of spiritual sustenance for sundry English, Cornish and Manx fishermen in the historic and busy Co Cork port, and now tourism town, this stone-built hall could be seen as a bit of a Catch of the Day, given its €400,000 price via agents Sherry FitzGerald.

It has changed hands several times in the past 20 years, most notably in the early 1990s when taken on as a domestic house conversion by the Corrigan family who had relocated to Kinsale from overseas.

They fully converted a fairly basic shell and sold it on, after more than a decade in residence. Its cutesy country house looks and craft decor changed a bit in the next owner’s tenure. Now, as its come up again for sale – for far less than it made last time around – it once again needs a bit of work and a fresh personality, as well as spit and polish. It offers a lot of space and potential.

It has 2,600 sq ft of space, and scope for up to six bedrooms and has as its front and best feature a soaring, lofty, full double height 500 sq ft room with pitched timber roof, tall gothic windows with some stained glass, and an internal, overlooking Juliet balcony.

Fisherman’s Hall is right on the tourist trail, on Higher O’Connell Street, beneath the Ramparts and with the back of Acton’s Hotel blocking the harbour views.

Other rooms include a smaller study or living room, kitchen with new gloss units, a few of the six bedrooms are at ground level, and the staircase was salvaged from a shop building in Cobh.

Maintained original character touches come from the slate roof, stone walls, timber windows and salvaged timber, and ultra-authenticity is in the form of the original dedication plaque on the stairwell hall. It was erected by the exertions of the Rev John Duncan Craig DD, Vicar of the Parish from 1864 to 1872 ‘to the Glory of God, and in furtherance of His work amongst the fishing fleet,’ and carried the hope that “They go down to the sea in ships, They do business in great waters: These see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.”

This newspaper, in its 1871 Cork Examiner guise, reported its role “where the Kinsale fishermen sons of Huguenots and the fisher lads will have a sound scriptural and secular education given them”. Later on it was associated with the St Multose church community, playwright Lennox Robinson recalls it in his memoir Three Homes, and it was owned in the 20th century by sculptor David Gillespie who planned to turn it into an art gallery. Next use? In the lap of the Gods.>