Old Head, Kinsale house gathers interest at home and overseas

Old Head home seeks new hands, says Tommy Barker.  

AN INTERNET posting just before the Christmas holidays of this old-style country home’s arrival on the property market turned into a deluge of online inquiries, when the country woke up and came back to business earlier this month.

“I was bombarded by e-mails on January 4th, as soon as we turned on the computer again after the break,” says local Kinsale estate agent James Murphy, expressing a happy surprise at how busy he’s been since, with first viewings. He’s answering calls and mails from all over the country, and from far farther afield too, including the US, Far East and Europe.

The 1850s detached home, near the Old Head of Kinsale, its golf course, and beaches at Garrettstown is also a short haul from Ballinspittle at a townland quaintly called Ballyrub.

It’s shot past its €200,000 guide already to 4250k in offers, and Mr Murphy bills this Ballyrub home as old-world, on an acre of gardens ready to spring into new life, and it has two reception rooms, kitchen, sun room, four bedrooms plus shower room with sink on a mosaic-tiled plinth; handily, there’s an attached store which could be converted to further living accommodation.

Its bedroom windows are deep, almost down to ground level and are a distinctive feature, as is the retained Victorian hall tiling.

“I had an architect visit who knows about old houses and she said she reckoned the house might have belonged to a priest, a doctor or some other person with a certain ‘place’ in society back then as there are better features than you’d see in most farm houses of this age,” says the selling agent.

The current owner has been here at the Old Head for 35 years, and the house has taken on an engaging personality, but is likely to need further spending and energy efficiency upgrades.

VERDICT: New head wanted.

Old Head, Kinsale

Price: €200,000 AMV but under higher offers

Sqm 150 (1,620 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 4

Bathrooms: 1

BER: E2