VIDEO: House of the week: Great Island, Cobh/Cork €850,000

THE owners and builders of Hunters Crest didn’t exactly rush into building their dream home: in fact, they owned the land for over 20 years, before getting around to putting a house on it. And, what a property mix it has all turned out to be.

Set on a rise of ground off the less-travelled road around Cork Harbour’s Great Island, out past Belvelly Castle (which is currently being restored as a private holiday home,) and out around Belvelly creek, Hunters Crest is a modern, 2003-built 3,000 sq ft family home, within an old walled orchard, and on six acres of grounds in all, with stables, paddocks and much planting.

It has been a labour of love for retired publican Gus Murphy, who ran the Admiral bar in Cobh for decades, and who eventually retired after 42 years behind a bar counter. He remarks that he enjoyed the first 30 years of the business(!), and recalls the boom years when Irish Steel, Verolme and the Navy employed many thousand of men in the area, as well as the days when Spike Island was a quarantine holding pen for cattle being imported to Ireland from France and elsewhere.