Don't be a goose: duck out of the fast lane at West Cork's Skeaghanore

Fair beauties to be found at this fowl Skeaghanore Ballydehob webbed address, says Tommy Barker

Skeaghanore, Ballydehob for sale via Colm Cleary of  James Lyons O'Keeffe.

Ballydehob, West Cork
€350,000
Size	140 sq m
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	2
BER	D2

YOU hardly need a web search for the Ballydehob townland of Skeaghanore to know what it’s most famous for: Skeaghanore is renowned for duck, and for other farm-reared and web-footed fowl too.

The area, between the main West Cork coastal highway the N71 and the sea by Roaringwaterbay, is home to a well-established, family-run business,

Ballydehob's Skeaghanore is noted for locally-reared duck and geese. Pictured here in 2019 are some of Helena Hickey's flock of 600 geese. Picture: Andy Gibson.

Skeaghanore Duck, founded in the mid-1990s by second-generation poultry rearer Eugene Hickey and his wife Helena (pic, above right), who added goose to their range of poultry, with Pekin duck their top seller nationwide.

The open plan kitchen/living/dining room.

Fowl motives aside Skeaghanore is also a fair beauty spot, set towards the top or eastern end of Roaringwater Bay, overlooking the entrance to the river at Ballydehob River, Mannin Island, Kilcoe Castle, and cove “all delightful tidal locations, and this property is adjacent to all of them,” says auctioneer Colm Cleary, as he lists a 1,500 sq ft bungalow for sale here with a €350,000 AMV.

Do a web search on Colm Cleary himself, meanwhile, and you might come across a 2020 reference to the fact that he sold a home in the wider Ballydehob hinterland to actor Saoirse Ronan, who paid a reported €800,000 for an Irish holiday home and hideaway right by the water’s edge, at a spot called Foilnamuck.

His successful sale to multi-award nominated Saoirse Ronan – whose latest movie Ammonite, shot by the English seaside and co-starring Kate Winslet goes on digital platforms later this month - only broke in the latter half of last year after the sale closed and word began to leak out about the purchase: it appears he, and possibly some other local West Cork agents, had shown the Bronx-born Irish actor a number of possible property options last summer between the country’s two Covid-19 lockdowns.

Millionaire's Row? Glaisin Ailinn Foilnamuck sold for c €1.45m. It's next door to actor Saoirse Ronan's new West Cork holiday home purchase (not in photo), which she bought in 2020 for c €800,0000 via agents James Lyons O'Keeffe. In the distance across Roaringwater Bay is fellow actor Jeremy Irons' Kilcoe Castle

Ronan, who had previously visited Schull and Ballyhob with her mother Monica and who has attended the Fastnet Film Festival as a guest, is likely to cause some further ripples in the West Cork market when she gets a chance to get to know the area, and the neighbours.

Kilcoe Castle the home of Jeremy Irons and Sinéad Cusack on the shore of Roaringwater Bay between Skibbereen and Ballydehob on the Wild Atlantic Way in West Cork. Picture Dan Linehan

This 2021 market listing at Skeaghanore is on the opposite, Cork side of Ballydehob to Foilnamuck, off the approach N71, and is said to be “in excellent condition throughout,” says Mr Cleary, who works in the Schull-based James Lyons O’Keeffe agency and who’s a joint agent in this sale with another local agent Martin Swanton.

It’s on 0.6 of an acre, is modern, and has an open plan kitchen/living/dining room, three bedrooms one of which is en-suite, but the best most likely is the gable end sunroom, a good-sized space about 24’ by 15’, with high, pitched or vaulted ceilings with some exposed featured beams and a tiled floor, with garden access and a sweep of the bay and rural views.

It has a D2 BER, oil central heating, PVC double glazing, gardens, and a shed.

The Price Register shows only three Skeaghanore east and west results of late, at price from to €129,000 to €249,000.

VERDICT: You can get down at Skeaghanore, with not much more than a waddle to the water.