HOUSE OF THE WEEK

Crosshaven House, lovingly restored with grandeur galore has a modest guide price of €1.6 million.

IT is already 250 years old, but now there must be centuries more left still in Crosshaven House. One of the leading renovation/conservation jobs of the boom times, this grand seaside village house (and it is the very heart of the village) might today be shorn of its original acres of grounds and outbuildings, but the interiors and all of its gracious space are exemplary.

Crosshaven House was saved from declining fortunes and its decaying physical fabric during the early 2000s when it was bought by enterprising Dublin businessman Austin Cripps — who’d first spied it from a boat when sailing into Crosshaven.

Locals and Corkonians visiting the village quite possibly had begun to take the house’s stoic existence for granted, even as it slid into decay. Cripps saw it with fresh eyes, and threw himself into reversing its fortunes, with gusto, passion, and a skilled crew headed up by conservation engineer Chris Southgate.

It is quite a testament to his energy and vision, and following his tragic death, the house spent a short period finding its feet again as a commercial venture.

Now, a decision has been taken to sell up, and let some other new owner drive on with it, either as a private home, a business venture, or as a fairly exclusive guest retreat, with a village and amenities literally on its doorsteps.

While Crosshaven hasn’t quite the spread on offer that Kinsale, for example might have in terms of tourism offerings, it has a special status as the home of Irish sailing.

The Royal Cork Yacht Club’s status as the world’s oldest club, and home to the bi-annual Cork Week racing extravaganza brings a competitive, moneyed set to its shores: a link to this set might be part of Crosshaven House’s future.

Equally, there may be a bit of corporate interest from a harbour-based multi-national. Pepsi, for example, has an huge plant nearby on the Carrigaline-Crosshaven road.

Or, given its almost-modest guide price of €1.6 million (given the sums its painstaking conservation would have swallowed) via estate agent Malcolm Tyrrell of Cohalan Downing (jointly with Colliers International,) it may well be picked up as a bit of a trophy home for a family, though he also sees it having a sort of dual-use scope, mixing real quality living space and some income generating uses too.

It would make a great cookery school, he instances, and there’s not a lot of guest accommodation in the area, since Crosshaven’s two former hotels closed and were converted to other uses. Might the Grand Hotel’s conversion to large apartments presage some similar divide here, perhaps into four individual suites, one per floor, subject to planning permission?

Three-storeys over a very effective semi-basement (with whitewashed exposed stone walls down here) there’s grandeur galore on the upper floors, with reception rooms on each of the two upper levels.

All the hoped-for period finery is here, with the added comforts of quality bathroom suites, central heating throughout, and there’s even a sauna.

The house replaced an early mansion here, and was built over a 10-year period, completed in 1769. It stayed in the same Hayes family’s lineage, up until 1973, when it was bought by the community association, who developed public amenities in its grounds.

Unfortunately for the house’s privacy, some of its uses are quite cheek-by-jowl; there’s pitch and putt, a tennis court, and the side pavilions and out-buildings (linked underground to the main mansion) are in different ownership right now.

It would be great to see them brought back under the main house’s wings, depending on which direction a new owner decides to take the house.