Townshend is only the beginning for gilded setting in West Cork

Despite a €5m tag, there’s a quiet air of confidence about Seafield’s sale prospects, writes Tommy Barker.

Back in their 19th-century heyday, many of the finest homes in West Cork’s Castletownshend sort of did a ‘musical chairs’ series of ownership exchanges, with the tiny coastal community’s most wealthy families buying and selling houses to one another, sort of a more extreme version of holiday home swaps.