PICS: Liss Ard estate in West Cork— yours for €7.5m

Liss Ard Estate, which has played host to singers, rock concerts and the rich and the infamous, and which was once bought for the Swiss government as a bolthole in case of a Soviet invasion or a nuclear war, is for sale, guiding at €7.5m.

The estate, on almost 200 woodland acres near Skibbereen in West Cork, has variously been bought by a neurotic Swiss spymaster, a German art dealer, as a most private retreat, as well as opening twice as a manor hotel.

Most recently it has been a wellness centre, and is home to a Sky Garden by the American artist James Turrell, where people lie on their backs on a stone slab, to look up at the sky through a man-made earthen crater. Liss Ard is rarely boring.