Grandchildren by the dozen prompt Beara Bay house sale by a waterfall

A growing brood of grandchildren prompted the owner of Roaring Water to find a new home, writes Tommy Barker

Thu, 16 Jan, 2020 - 19:00

Tommy Barker

A growing brood of grandchildren prompted the owner of Roaring Water to find a new home, writes Tommy Barker

Brexit, but more importantly babies literally by the dozen, are factors so far in the background mix to the sale of Roaring Water, a stunningly set one-off coastal home by a waterfall, on a glorious stretch of the Beara Peninsula in wild West Cork.

Built in a wooded setting on a screened acre, where a stream turns to a cascade after rain hitting the Caha Mountains to the north, between the main road and the sea at Millcove, Roaring Water was designed and built about 12 years ago by a West Cork woman who wanted to trade down from an adjacent, larger family home at Millcove, after her four adult children were reared and flown the nest.

However, no sooner had Deirdre Minihane started her dream build than her first grandchild arrived, now aged 11 and a half, and this ‘first’ was followed, steadily, by another 11 grandchildren (so far), including a set of twins among the dozen in the extended brood.

So, it turns out that the bespoke, 1,780 sq ft three-bed home is now too small to accommodate clan gatherings, especially in summer when her two daughters return from Tralee and Dublin to join their brothers; they continue to live locally, working as fishermen in rejuvenated Castletownbere.

The lively Minihane melees are great, but the simple fact underlying them is that the house isn’t entirely suitable for marauding children, what with some internal split levels and steps; even more so for the presence of water, right on the doorstep.

“I though I was going into a quiet retirement, there’s never a dull moment, but we can’t fit everyone in, and they visit in stages,” Deirdre explains.

So, another (larger) home has already been bought by the bustling fishing port, where a €30m harbour upgrade is ongoing, and Roaring Water’s been up for grabs on the local and international property market for a while.

It carries a price guide of €495,000 via estate agent Olivia Hanafin of Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill, and that’s stayed unchanged since first put for sale, and it’s always managed to garner quite an international level of inquiries and viewings, Ms Hanafin says.

It had gone ‘sale agreed’ in 2019 very close to the €495k guide, to buyers moving over to West Cork from the UK. But, that sale was dependent on her buyers selling their own home.

That part of the ‘chain’ collapsed, put down to Brexit dampening the native UK market as well as impacting on West Cork’s own coastal area sales over the past several years.

As 2020 kicks off, and as a number of West Cork estate agents feel some clarity at least now on Brexit could see things move a bit more positively again, Roaring Water is getting a mix of Irish and overseas viewing requests (French and Dublin in the most recent times.)

Vendor Deirdre Minihane’s previous home, on two acres, is close by, as is the chi-chi Millcove Art Gallery, and this stretch of road a short spin from Castletownbere is extremely highly prized, and planing is now virtually impossible for anyone to secure.

Deirdre kept an acre from their previous Millcove family home property to build Roaring Water, and she called it thus after growing up in Skibbereen and living by the Ilen river and near Roaringwater Bay, at Aughadown.

She says she had to do lots of excavation to get the site and setting just right for this true one-off, and as the digging went on, a Wow! reveal unfolded, whilst she used the service of eco-architect Tony Cohu to finesse her own sketches and wishlist.

It was built on site in timber frame, and is finished externally in slate, and has a high, B3 BER. She recalls “about 15% of the budget went into insulation, it’s a super-warm home. The timber frame builder is now active in Dublin and when he visited recently remarked ‘I was ahead of the curve’ for the time, she adds.

There’s lots of energy-efficient glazing, solar panels, a wood-burning stove in the main, 20’ by 18 high-ceilinged living room, and oil central heating, while the one-acre site is almost a micro climate in its own right and “everything grows here, nothing seems to fail.”

Layout-wise, it’s quite open plan, yet not fully so, with a ground floor en suite bedroom at the far end, past a 28’ long kitchen/diner in the mid section. There’s also a porch, utility and guest WC, and upstairs are two double bedrooms, with the master having a big bay window plus a large dressing room, main bathroom with tiled, step-up bath, and a separate hotpress. In all, about two-thirds of the overall floor area is at the lower/ground level, with a good range of large sliding doors for easy patio/terrace/garden access.

Ms Minihane quips that when guests come to stay, she advises that they they can choose to sleep with the windows open, or closed, but counsels them that if they have weak bladders, which may inadvertently be triggered into imminent nocturnal flow by a sudden rush or rise in the ‘roaring waters’ outside after rain, she advises “close the windows!” (And, PS, following the last two weeks of comment regarding large expanses of glass post-Dermot Bannon’s own home show on RTÉ, it’s worth noting that Roaring Water’s most glazed elements have discrete roller blinds for night-time reflection elimination, or as handily for sun screening.

Meanwhile, on a slightly more elevated plane, the woman who delivered her Roaring Water dream to this level says the proximity of the Dzogchen Beara Buddhist Retreat Centre on the other side of Castletownbere is a huge lifestyle attraction.

One of the UK couple who set their heart on Roaring Water in ‘19 was into the Chinese practice of Feng Shui, and “she floated a red handwritten note into the stream, to be carried to the sea, to get her house wish. Unfortunately, Brexit put the tin hat on that,” shrugs the ever-optimistic, upbeat grandmother of 12 young ‘uns.