West Cork haven with fire power - for those with €1.95m financial muscle

The historic Rocket House, situated on 'Ireland's Riviera' at  Castletownshend, is the amalgamation of six coastguard cottages

The Rocket House once accommodated several coastguard families, along with lifesaving rocket launch and breeches buoy paraphernalia for rescues from stricken ships along this notoriously dangerous and wreck-strewn section of the West Cork coastline. Picture: Damien Kelly

Castletownshend, West Cork
€1.95m
Size	420 sq m (4,500 sq ft)
Bedrooms	7
Bathrooms	6
BER	E2

WHOEVER lands the Rocket House at coastal, charming and castellated Castletownshend is going to be a lover of the sea — that’s hardly in doubt.

The 19th-century home is for sale with a €1.95m price tag, but it last sold in 2008 to overseas buyers for up to €3.5/€4m.

Waterside Rocket House at the entrance to Castlehaven harbour, set at the end of on Castletownshend's Mall.

It dips its toes into the relative shelter of the waters at the edge of the ‘gentrified’ village famed for its period homes and writers, and vertiginous Main Street and offshoot The Mall, all steeped in briny roots.

Very much a component of West Cork’s claim to be ‘Ireland’s Riviera’, or an equivalent to many Devon or Cornwall seaside communities (without their summer-long traffic and tailbacks), Castletownshend is steeped in the sea, cocooned in a Wild Atlantic Way setting. Its amenities are added to by any amount of maritime activities and attractions, and its coastline is littered with ship wrecks — and rocks with the potential to still do much damage.

Rocket House is at the water's edge, by a boathouse in Castletownshend

The Rocket House once accommodated several coastguard families, along with lifesaving rocket launch and breeches buoy paraphernalia for rescues from stricken ships along this notoriously dangerous and wreck-strewn section of the West Cork coastline. Rescues included those from armadas, fishing fleets, and wartime subs and ships, with the Lusitania to the east, nearer Kinsale, and the enormous bulk carrier the Kowloon Bridge to the west, on the jagged Stags rocks.

The rocket-firing technology — in use for several centuries and used in many places until recent decades — is reckoned to have saved many thousands of seafarers’ lives around the Irish coastline, especially in the 19th century when Castletownshend’s was built, one of many necklaced around the island. 

Apart from static rocket launches, many stations also had carts to transport launching equipment to cliffs and headlands close to vessels in distress, working from a height and at a firing distance of up to 200m, shore to ship.

Rocket House was originally six cottages and was joined into one large dwelling in the early 20th century

The exact history and specific role of Castletownshend’s Rocket House isn’t well documented: some versions say rockets were fired from here in immediately close distance — although its setting is close to sea level and at the mouth of a pretty sheltered and safe bay, hence the ‘haven’ in the naming of Castlehaven harbour. The Rocket House’s sales brochure from Skibbereen estate agents Charles P McCarthy say flares may have been fired from here to guide ships into the shelter of the bay, which runs up towards Rinneen past Reen.

Its origins go back to Famine times and architectural historian Frank Keohane, in his authoritative 2020-published Pevsner Buildings of Ireland Cork City and County, dates the current Rocket House structure to 1869, when it comprised six two-storey coastguard cottages.

They were amalgamated into one, large private home in the first half of the 20th century and previous owners included the Chavasse family, who had also owned the adjacent, far larger Seafield House, a close water-fronting neighbour to the Rocket House, with a few small boathouses, a slip and a shingle beach between the two engagingly sited period homes.

Seafield House, on four acres and one of West Cork’s very finest bolt-holes, was put to the market (with agents Charles McCarthy) in 2019 with a €5m price tag and featured extensively here at the time, being sold by an international owner and only an occasional visitor.

Seafield was for sale last year guiding €5 million

Seafield has since been withdrawn from the open market but, given West Cork’s current allure and reputation to the super wealthy as a safe place for a pandemic or during stirring times, it may yet find a high-net-worth buyer.

Meanwhile, despite Castletownshend’s reputation for fine period properties and occasional €1m+ listings (such as the 4,800 sq ft Red House in 2017 at €1.45m), the Price Register shows just one sale in the village in a decade at over €1m. That was Bow Hall, making €1.2m in 2015, while the year before Glasheenaillin, a contemporary ‘farmhouse-style’ cluster nearer Toe Head, made €1.65m.

Given ever larger multi-million euro deals in the past year or so on the likes of Glandore’s Kilfinnan Castle (€5.7m), the Liss Ard Estate near Skibbereen (€3.5m, bought for commercial use) and Horse Island (€5.5m) in Roaringwater Bay, there’s clearly a cohort of property seekers in a fairly exclusive price category who’ll be wooed, and won, by this Rocket House launch at €1.95m.

Comfortable interiors at the Rocket House

It last got offered in 2008, at market peak, at €3.25m with agent Michael H Daniels but, despite being thought to have made closer to €4m, its exact selling price is unconfirmed as it was in pre-register days.

What a view

Its vendors, an international couple with a UK base, have used it for family holidays, but are now selling on. Perhaps, along with distant owners of the adjacent Seafield House, they fit the description of Castletownshend’s propertied, landed, funded and otherwise wealthy classes: “There are many genteel families, some permanent, others occasionally resident, who live in pleasant and friendly association.” That was noted back in 1810 by none other than the Rev Horatio Townsend. 

Rocket House is an early 2021 listing, during a pandemic era, ironically a peculiar period that may well work in its favour — once access and viewing restrictions ease, especially for those coming from over the seas.

One of the characterful seven bedrooms

Agent Maeve McCarthy says the seven-bedroomed, dormer-style period 4,500 sq ft home “occupies one of the most enviable waterfront positions on the West Cork coastline… comprehensively restored and converted to one substantial residence”. She adds that the navigable Castlehaven harbour “provides safe access at all states of the tide and is one of the most popular sailing destinations on this coastline”.

It’s set on 0.75 acres, sheltered from the west and, given its historical roots, it’s little surprise that nearly every room has a sea view. You can survey the maritime traffic into and out of the harbour, from trawlers and ocean-crossing yachts to bay-hopping kayaks.

It has another old, small boathouse and a cove next to its boundary at the foot of The Mall, and the property mix includes a small ‘look out’ building, the original rocket house and guest accommodation attached to the main residence, which has a double-height entrance hall, two reception rooms, two sunrooms/conservatories (with one holding 12 for dinner), an oak-fitted kitchen, pantry, utility etc; and up to six bathrooms in all.

Adding to the appeal to lovers of the sea is a traditional Admiralty flagpole. The grounds include a stone marking, dating from 1811, denoting ‘Ordnance Survey levelling Mark No 1,’ a historical benchmark point of reference for measuring sea levels.