Take off with this unique Cork harbour home
The selling agents are hoping for a quick take off and a flying-high price result at this Lower Aghada, Cork harbour-fronting home.
It has quite a unique historical claim to its grounds, as 99 years ago, they hosted a fleet of flying planes, for the US Naval Air Service as they patrolled the North Atlantic in the last-gasp months of the First World War.
Cork harbour/Queenstown Cobh had long hosted British naval craft, but less well-known is the fact that after the US joined the war effort, it acquired four ‘Ireland Stations’ sites under the Defence of the Realm Act, with Curtiss H16 seaplanes and personnel on each.
Queenstown/Aghada was far and away the largest station as well as a training base for the other three at Whiddy, Lough Foyle and Wexford.
By the end of the war, Cork harbour and West Cork housed a staggering 9,000 US naval personnel, Queenstown also had a US servicemen’s hospital.
Lower Aghada hosted 28 seaplanes and had over 1,400 men briefly stationed here who did 64 flying missions, hunting down German submarines, between September and November 1918.
The station, with its slips, piers, runways and hangers, was sold off by 1919, and other plans for alternative uses such as transatlantic, airship station came to nought, and in 1970s a hovercraft factory was also mooted but never gathered its skirts.
A century on, the Aghada NAS base still has some visible reminders of those stirring times of war, and a significant portion is home to the local tennis club’s courts and clubhouse, built on some of the abandoned, giant concrete slabs.
Plus, amid the reminders are old engraved limestone pillars declaring US Naval Air Base, and some subsequently-built houses, of which this one’s now up for resale, complete with direct frontage to the waters of Cork harbour.
Listed with Russell Estate agents is the decade-plus old four-bed c 1,800 sq ft dormer, priced at €395,000, and they say while it’s in excellent condition inside, the untamed gardens running to c 0.37 of an acre “are a blank canvas awaiting those green-fingered amongst you to take on the challenge of creating your own coastal garden paradise.”
The setting, at the water’s edge between Midleton and Whitegate is very sought after, they add.
Chocks away, and happy landings
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