Something about 'Mary' near glitzy Glandore for €835,000

There's been a surge of interest in West Cork properties since lockdown. Enter Mary White's cottage overlooking Glandore Harbour

Mary White's cottage, priced at €835,000, and gloriously set by a shingle beach and a slipway at West Cork’s Carrigillihy, out from Union Hall and Glandore Harbour. 

It didn’t take a global pandemic to let people know just how especially beautiful the West Cork coastline is — the surprise is that it isn’t even busier, even-more visited, more dotted with yachts and pleasure boats, camper vans, caravans and family SUVs with crammed roof boxes, roof racks with kayaks and SUPs (Stand Up Paddleboards), exploring its isles, nooks, crannies, cliffs and coves, beaches and bays.

There are signs it’s about to ratchet up a gear in summer 2020, the year of lockdown, of Stay at Home health warnings, and Staycations.

Since lockdown eased in June, we Irish have rediscovered our shoreline and coastline, hidden spots, busy beaches and our resurrecting towns coming back out of Covid-19 slumbers, July’s pretty mediocre weather notwithstanding.

Estate agents and property vendors anywhere within spitting distance of the sea, or a lake, are recording how there’s a surge of home-seeking interest from those who no longer want the work-life they had before, and are seeking to mix work with life in a better balance, freer, and more removed from the 9-5, Monday to Friday office and commute grind.

Apart from the general increase in inquiry levels, there are some spectacular sales too, with West Cork leading the way.

They range from the c €5.5m paid by a European purchaser of the 153 acre Horse Island as a private sanctuary, after bids from a rival overseas high-net-worth individual, neither of whom got to set a foot on the island and see its seven houses because of Coronavirus quarantine strictures, to the ‘fortunes’ of a beachside bungalow near Rosscarbery.

In the latter’s case, there’s been a truly remarkable bidding trajectory on a small c 1,180 sq ft bungalow right on the sandy Warren Strand, built in the 1950s. The four-bed home featured here in mid-June when it carried a €395,000 AMV with agents Hodnett Forde.

At least three bidders gave chase, and by last weekend it was hitting €620,000, an extraordinary sum given its lack of privacy, as it’s very open to the beach, a public car-park and a cliff walk.

Might there be buried treasure no-one knows about beneath its floors? It’s certainly paying rich dividends for the Cork family who’ve used it as a holiday home for 20 years.

Notably too, €620,000 will give home hunters of any hue and wealth level quite a choice of other water-fronting homes, up and down West Cork. But, not this one.

Enter, at this point, Mary White’s cottage, with a steeper AMV of €835,000, and gloriously set by a shingle beach and a slipway at West Cork’s Carrigillihy, a skip along wildflower-strewn country lanes past a lake dotted with lilies, out from Union Hall and Glandore Harbour.

It’s been the family home of owners who are based in the UK, and who have now taken the decision to sell, and so it’s listed with estate agent Maeve McCarthy of Charles P McCarthy in Skibbereen, who’ve been ready to launch for sale for some time, and just now able to put it online, hitting websites just before the August Bank Holiday to whet the appetites of those who were holidaying in West Cork when thoughts turned to something a bit more permanent? 

Carrying the name of a previous owner, Mary White’s Cottage is an extended, originally century-plus-year-old stone cottage which hugs one of the prettiest shorelines in diminutive Carrigillihy, which is probably home to not much more than two dozen other properties, a short haul away from busy Union Hall.

There’s no escaping the proximity of the sea, it laps up to the property’s 0.4 acre boundary, with a shingle beach either side, a wide crescent of stony, gently shelving beach by the main ‘strip’ (which is deserted 300 days of the year) and smaller, more private (though no beaches can be private, being public at least up to the high watermark,) plus there’s a slipway for launching small craft, fishing boats and dinghies to the side.

There are mooring options with the purchase of this 1,600 sq ft detached water-side home, and in fact, the waters of Carrigillihy are crisscrossed with a spider’s web of mooring and hauling lines, easily navigated over by the many kayaks and rubber dinghies plying, padding and doodling along its indents.

Just off the mouth of the extremely sheltered bay here are rocky outcrops and small islands, such as the Stack of Beans, High Island and Rabbit Island, with the latter often visited by day-trippers (and, sometimes, by more adventurous overnight campers) from Carrigillihy and from the nearby Squince Harbour and Myross headland just west of fishing port Union Hall.

One of the more sheltered bays along the coast, and about 75 minutes by car from Cork city and airport, Carrigillihy comes into its own in summers and in soft, off-season days and weeks, and is lesser known than the bays around Squince, Reen, Castletownshend, Mill Cove or the Warren, and was first ‘colonised’ by holiday-makers in the early 1960s, many of them from the UK who christened it ‘the bay of laughing children.

One as stunningly set as Mary White’s Cottage came to these pages at the property market’s other peak in 2006, carrying a €950,000 price guide for its British owners: what is sold for isn’t, however, on the Price Register which only records two Carrigillihy transactions since 2010, at €170,000 and at €365,000.

Whoever gets to buy Mary White’s Cottage will, surely, love the sea, and the only question or doubt is will it be bought as a second/holiday home, as it is now (and, occasionally rented out), or might it become a full-time bolthole for an individual or family in search of a beautiful place to live, and able to work remotely via broadband.

If the latter, there are some ‘heavier lifting’ of work options also available through high-speed data chewing hubs like the Ludgate Centre in Skibbereen: it certainly would be a new take on ‘doing the messages,’ firing off gigabytes of data, and then shopping for the other, more pressing pleasurable messages in Fields’ SuperValu in Skib, at the Farmers’ Market, or more locally in Union Hall’s Centra.

One way or the other, this is a ‘lifestyle’ buy for those who can afford it, either as a relocation move from a city or as a seasonal/weekend/pandemic lockdown bolthole.

Internally, it’s as pretty and engaging as the exterior and its setting, mixing old-world feel with modern comfort. The visual aesthetic is country farm home, with exposed stone walls painted white for a whitewash look, and floors at ground level tiled in old slate, mostly, with some exposed ceiling beams, both at ground and first-floor level have tall, pitched apex ceilings, and arched gable windows, framing water views.

Ms McCarthy says the dormer-style home “has been tastefully extended and modernized over the years and now provides a home of style and comfort that makes the most of its unique location,” which she describes as ‘spectacular’ and ‘sublime.’ 

There’s direct water access from the grounds, whilst the wall remains of a pre-famine dwelling give parking shelter and, with mature hedging help to screen the house and its side sunroom from a small road on the other side.

There’s a storage shed for boating and bathing gear, and A pedestrian gate opens the way down to a sun terrace by the sunroom, and the main sitting room also has terrace access.

The original cottage was added to in a T-shape, and onto one gable, giving rooms inside that include at its core a kitchen with a mix of pale-blue painted units (with ceramic Belfast sink), some freestanding units and appliances, and this central room is double-height, with staircase and roof light above, with a galleried landing.

Separately, there’s a traditional-style 20’ by 11’ sitting room-dining room, with corner stove, and a smaller living room with another stove, in a raised hearth under an inglenook beam. 

Accommodation at ground level then is rounded off with a utility and a study, with surely-distracting sea views.

Go up the painted timber stairs, and the ‘cottage’ has three bedrooms, two of them sharing a main bathroom, and the 20’ by 10’ master bedroom has an en-suite of its own.

Both from within, and by the terrace/deck there’s “a sensation of floating high above the harbour with a bird’s eye view of everything going on below,” enthuses auctioneer Maeve McCarthy, who adds there’s a retained authenticity, yet with a fresh, modern ambience. She might not have a too miserable time doing viewings in the coming weeks?

VERDICT: We’ll just reprise the verdict of a previous editorial for a home here at this quiet and safe backwater: “More than the sum of its parts. Carrigillihy beckons with boats for island picnics, bodyboards, buckets and bliss.”

• Location: Carrigillihy, Union Hall, West Cork
• Price: €835,000
• Size: 151 sq m (1,600 sq ft)
• Bedrooms: 3
• Bathrooms: 2
• BER: E2