Nohoval mill conversion yields coastal comfort down by a cove

A coastal Cork mill building which literally has come back from the dead has a poignant anniversary next year— it’s by an on-shore spot close to the 1915 sinking of a British tanker.

Despite being launched in 1914 with the dashing name of El Zorro, the 6,000 tonne vessel was sighted and sunk by a prowling German U-boat on December 28 ending the same year as the famous Lusitania when it went down off the same south coastline, beyond the Old Head of Kinsale, a sinking with 1,200 souls lost that triggered the US’s entry into WW1. It’s all a bit apposite for historic Nohoval’s Mill setting, with its craggy rocks, outcrops of sandstone shard and forbidding cliffs.

This mill building, now resuscitated and back to rude health, is just a few hundred yards from what’s essentially a private beach, with the evocative title of Man of War Cove (also called Smugglers Cove by some locals). Set between Ringabella and Oysterhaven, or on a slightly wider chart, between Cork harbour’s Roches Point lighthouse and Kinsale’s Old Head lighthouse, with the ocean-bed all along littered with shipwrecks over the past several centuries.