House of the week: Lislevane, West Cork €185,000"

Estate agent Damian Murray has been blessed - twice - with a West Cork home sale now called the Old Priest’s House - even though a priest never lived in it.

Lislevane, West Cork €185,000

Sq m 140 (1,500 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 3

BER: N/A

Mr Murray last had this three-bed coastal area home up for sale two years ago, and he sold it back then but now the owners’ circumstances have changed and it’s back on the market, all done up since, and now guided at €185,000 as the owners and renovators prepare to return to Northern Ireland.

Likely to date to the early 1900s, the so-called Old Priest’s House is on a roadside site of one-third of an acre near Lislevane and Barryroe, about an hour’s travel west of Cork city.

Set near beaches at Dunworley (it’s about a mile inland as the gull flies) it’s four kilometres from Timoleague and about the same from Courtmacsherry, with Bandon and Clonakilty towns each about a 15-20 minute spin by car. The house and site have tempting views back towards the sandy inlet at Lissycrimeen and Dunworley Bay.

Back two years ago, it was an executor sale, after the death of its male occupant: that man’s brother was a priest, in the UK, appointed as the executor of his estate.

“When he was selling it, potential buyers were calling to the parish priest’s house over the road. So, someone stuck a sign on this with ‘Old Priest’s House’ written on it and it stuck ever since,” Mr Murray explains.

(It shows up on the Price Register with that same Old Priest’s House name in Sept 2013, selling at the time in a far-more raw state for €70,000)

And, while what Mr Murray is selling now is ‘sort of’ what he sold a couple of years ago, it’s also totally different on the inside after a glossy makeover and upgrade: little wonder he observes: “I’ve seen a few houses in my time, but it’s not many that I would go back to again and again and again.

This is one.” (However, if the next owners bed down properly in this scenic coastal setting, he’ll just have to learn to let it go, unless invited in just for a cuppa.)

The most dramatic made-over rooms are the first floor bathrooms, done to that elevated ‘hotel suite standard, and similarly high-spec is the kitchen, with slick glossy units, in long runs, and as they’ve no need for drawer handles, the look is very sleek indeed, set off against cool grey walls.

This re-done kitchen has a black range cooker, plus oil-fired central heating, with a dramatic tall black wall radiator in the master bedroom’s en suite shower room where there’s an over-size walk-in shower: the other main, family upstairs bathroom has a cast iron roll top bath, double shower and a reproduction cast iron radiator. Finally, there’s a ground floor guest WC, adding to the replumbing tally.

All of the three first floor bedrooms have kept original fireplaces, and have distinctive sloping wood-sheeted ceilings thanks to the roof’s corner hips, and the formal front room has a slate fireplace and original wood floor.

The second, reception room (minus a chimneypiece as yet) links to the full-width rear kitchen/breakfast room and both rooms share the same new engineered, limed wood flooring.

Most of the original doors are kept in situ, some of the new ones are part-glazed, and the stairs is the original pitch pine. Windows are double-glazed, in painted timber casement frames and while the house doesn’t look too updated on the exterior in front with its quite-stocky and freshly painted facade, the interior belies this impression.

Bandon-based Damian Murray of ERA Paddy Murray now guides the Old Priest’s House at €185,000 and enthuses that the home has “character and style, finished and presented to the absolute highest of standards.”

The property has been totally refurbished in recent years to give an elegant mix of contemporary chic and old world charm which is altogether very appealing.”

VERDICT: Nicely guided under the €200k mark,and an hour from the Cork city, the old Priest’s House is a West Cork answer to someone’s prayers.