Four-bed high above Bantry for €875,000

This €875k Bantry bungalow's owner, the late Ted Toye, lived here while doing up Glengarriff Castle, which sold last year for €2.7m

Seskin, Bantry, West Cork, home of late Ted Toye, is on the market for €875,000.  Pictures: Niamh Whitty

Seskin, Bantry, Co Cork
€875,000
Size	420 sq m
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	C2

This very comfortable 4,500 sq ft was home for just a handful of years to the late Ted Toye, a British national and multi-millionaire who fell hard for the Bantry and Beara area about a decade ago.

Despite an official business retirement, at a good age, the well-received Mr Toye threw himself into the local community in this West Cork catchment.

Glengarriff Castle sold in 2020 for €2.7m via Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes

At one stage, he bought the highly regarded and garlanded O’Connors Seafood Restaurant in the middle of Bantry and, among other investments, he also bought Glengarriff Castle, as a ruin, in 2014 for a reported €1.6 million, far less than the castle’s mad price hopes it once had, of €20m in Celtic Tiger days, when offered as a hotel opportunity.

Pool has air-to-water heating

Despite advanced years (he was understood to have been in his ninth decade) Mr Toye was hands-on at the helm of a JCB and other equipment at Glengarriff Castle’s return from decay and dereliction, and a good portion was reroofed, and windows had started to go in after stonework was being reinstated.

He passed away, unexpectedly, as it progressed and his ambitious restoration work at the 12,500 sq ft Glengarriff Castle on its waterfront 87 acres stalled.

It was sold last year, for €2.7m, to an undisclosed Covid-19 era purchaser who plans to finish the work started by Mr Toye with direction by conservation engineer Chris Southgate and to use it as a family compound retreat.

Involved in the castle sale was estate agent Ray O’Neill of Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill (with Sherry Fitz’s Country Homes division’s Roseanne De Vere Hunt), and now other property sources say that a further multi-million euro offer, a waterside estate with a clutch of bespoke and high-end holiday homes, may now come to market in the next 12 months, or less.

Meanwhile, SFON’s Mr O’Neill is back now selling the Toyes’ other, more manageable home at Bantry’s elevated Seskin.

It’s an upgraded single storey/split level house, still big at 4,500 sq ft and on a fairly sprawling footprint, but that measurement includes the piece de resistance, the indoor pool, now upgraded too to what’s described as an eco-level with air to water heating, in a pool room with a wood-sheeted ceiling that’s about 35’ by 31.’

There are three reception rooms, a conservatory with vaulted ceiling, four bedrooms with one en suite, and a kitchen, with several halls, and all are in good order, but sections are possibly a bit dated decoratively for contemporary design tastes.

It scores a D2 BER, and stands on three acres, with a garage and workshop on opposite sides of the house, one next to the pool, and ideal for garden (and, castle-building) machinery, cars, and sports equipment.

VERDICT: Big home, on three acres, with Bantry Bay and Caha mountain vistas, just a short trot up from the vibrant market town, with a heated indoor swimming pool for the €875k price… sure it’s cheaper than a half-done castle?