West Cork beauty is a glass act

Scenic views, a great design and an ideal location could help this house reach its guide, says Tommy Barker.

GLANDORE harbour, on a sunny day — there’s hardly a place in Ireland like it for a grand-circle views of coastline, island, rock and sublime landscape glories.

There’s a couple of pubs here high above the water, just before the road slaloms down to the pier and slip, and there’s a deserved reputation for food and al fresco, slowly sipped cool drinks, while simultaneously soaking in the vista.

Glandore is loved by sailors, with annual regattas and dinghy races, but in contrast to bustling fishing port Union Hall across the bay, the village can be whisper-quiet for vast chunks of the year.

It get its life-blood, human interaction, seasonally, swelling when holiday homes in prime perches are occupied (and there’s a fair number here quietly for sale) — the rest of the time, there’s glorious isolation.

Among the more golden spots in the west Cork village is Rushanes, a little-travelled back road wending up above Glandore village, with a few spectacular homes secreted away here.

Now, one of the biggest is up for sale, a 4,900 sq ft contemporary-styled family home with integrated (but scope for self-contained) apartment. Price guide at €1.5 million is as lofty as the house itself (on an acre about 150’ above sea level), and its joint agents Michael McKenna in Cork city, and Charles McCarthy in Skibbereen, hope the views will win the day.

There’s been a handful of million euro and multi-million euro deals done in Glandore before and among the bigger sales was the 2006 €2.5 million paid for TV’s Countdown star Carol Vorderman and her partner’s architectural stunner.

It has been a while now since those sort of prices have been reached, but Glandore still has its multi-millionaire property owners, like Anthony O’Reilly and British construction mogul Bernard McNicholas.

This Rushanes home, hoping to tap into that milieu, was built in the last few years by a local business owner, who got planning permission for three exceptional sites: hen’s teeth material.

Design is by Margaret Mulcahy of Mulcahy Ralphs, and the two-storey house on its sloping site is a mix of traditional (well, in that it has a pitched slate roof) with some slender stone cladding, and contemporary, in that there’s lots of glazing. Building technology has at last caught up with desire for large expanses of glazing, and it seems planners have reversed their previous veto on so-called picture windows.

Huge panes of glass were popular back in the 1960s and ‘70s, especially in bungalows, but the downside was loss of heat. For a while Irish planners fell back in love with traditional Irish window shapes, and insisted many one-offs in the country had sash-shaped replicas — no matter how beguiling the views beyond.

Here, floor-to-ceiling glass doors and panes are the crowning glory. They suit the house design, and open up the all-swaying views. The master bedroom, for example, has a double aspect and wall of glass, and you’d nearly feel you could dive headlong (well, hang-glide) into the harbour below.

The windows are highly thermally efficient, sourced from Leo West in Cork, and help the energy efficiency of this sizeable, 4,900 sq ft property. There’s also high insulation levels, underfloor heating at both ground and first floor level thanks to a Ducon concrete slab, so there is huge thermal mass to hold in solar-gained heat.

There are solar panels for water heating, handy as all four of the bedrooms have en suite bathrooms, and there’s CAT 5 cabling, so for those globe-trotters who want to work from home, well, the world is on hand, at high speeds.

The front of this house has south-facing views, with a home office to the rear, and a long hall with the kitchen at the far end: the owners quite cleverly cut out holes in the hall wall for glimpses through the best-placed rooms to the views.

Rooms include a 20’ by 20’ living room, double doors lead to a similar sized dining room, with a logical flow then to the 31’ by 18’ kitchen, with enormous storage capacity and units are by Stylecraft in Ballincollig. Floors are a mix of ceramic tile, timber and carpet upstairs, the staircase is bomb-proof and creak-proof concrete, with oak on top, with high-end bathrooms in all four bedrooms. One of the bedrooms, and a self-contained area (suitable as granny/au pair flat) at the far end of the house, have extensive glazed balconies to soak up the rays from.

VERDICT: What a settting!