Deep pockets needed for €5m luxury home on the 'Irish Riviera'
Ocean Breeze, Scilly, Kinsale Picture: Gordon Kinsella
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Kinsale, Co Cork |
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€5 million |
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Size |
5,000 sq ft |
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Bedrooms |
5 |
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Bathrooms |
7 |
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BER |
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While most of us no longer bat an eyelid at what were once headline-grabbing €1m house sales, a €5m property is a different ball game altogether. It’s the kind of price more typically associated with a D4 mansion in the embassy belt, on Dublin’s Elgin Road, of the kind Leinster rugby player James Tracy and his heiress wife, Ashley Doyle, granddaughter of the late hotel magnate PV Doyle, bought earlier this year in Ballsbridge for €5.5m.
Down South, houses in that price orbit are rare enough, but there are a few outliers, most notably in West Cork. Last summer, as reported in these pages, Horse Island in Roaringwater Bay, off Schull, sold for €5.5m “site unseen” to an overseas buyer. Generally speaking, West Cork outperforms most other coastal regions around the country when it comes to hot property prices and Kinsale is one of its star turns. Just last week, the rumour mill was in overdrive in relation to Constantia Farm on Compass Hill, a 347 sq m modern, luxury four-bed on 27 acres, reputedly guiding at €5m.
This week a second Kinsale property with a confirmed €5m price tag comes to market: Ocean Breeze, above the Scilly Walk, with jaw-dropping harbour views.
If you think it’s Scilly money, think again. Kinsale is a property micro-market with a track record of setting record prices, not unlike Dublin’s Dalkey, with an ability to attract a wealthy clientele, drawn to its stunning location, its gloriously vibrant town, and a cachet that comes with a postcode known in some quarters as the “Irish Riviera”.
Even within the Kinsale postcode, some addresses carry more clout. One of them is Scilly, where former Council houses have been known to sell for in excess of €1m, according to Victoria Murphy, Ireland’s first female real estate agent, who is retiring and handing over her real estate reins to her daughter Johanna.
In fact, Johanna Murphy of Johanna Murphy and Sons is handling the sale of new-to-market, Ocean Breeze, and she’s delighted to be extending her business — up until now largely Cobh-based — to Kinsale, while retaining her mum as an advisor and continuing with her business in Cobh.
Ms Murphy says Ocean Breeze, on circa one-third of an acre, is “a show-stopper”, “a superb, one-off, 5,000 sq ft family home, with stunning views that will attract an array of buyers”.
It certainly is a one-off and bears not a jot of resemblance to the property it replaced in 2006, which was known locally as the Long Bungalow, because of, well yes, its length. Prior to the current owner purchasing it, it belonged to the Goods, a well-known Kinsale family, with a history in livestock feed, who purchased the Trident Hotel in 1986.
The current owner, himself a hospitality industry veteran of 30 years, had been living in an apartment in Cork city and was on the lookout for a site to build his dream home. He found it in Scilly and bought it for €1.2m. After knocking the Long Bungalow, he hired Carrigaline-based Kieran J Barry & Associates, consulting engineers and architects, to design his new home.
Rose Construction did the building (and got plenty of referrals out of it, the owner says) and Ocean Breeze was born, rising high above Kinsale’s famous Scilly Walk, but yet low to the main road behind, so that anyone driving by would never guess at the scale of the property that lies behind its lovely stone roadside walls.
Privacy was a key consideration for the vendor, and his home, over three floors, is inside electric gates with a sophisticated camera-based security system in a dedicated room. It even has its own back-up generator in the event of a power failure, albeit it’s currently not connected up. The house also has a lift, a proper Otis job, able to transport six people at a go between the different floors.
The internal layout of the house is not typical of a family home — in fact, two families could live there in their own separate quarters. One wing of the house has a large first-floor living room/dining/kitchen area with an incredibly high vaulted ceiling, while the lift in the outside hallway takes you to the lower floor, where there are two ensuite bedrooms with dressing rooms, as well as another full-size bathroom and separate WC.
This wing is a home in itself, with access via French doors to the front garden from the lower level, while the upper living accommodation has a spectacular connection to the outdoors by way of extensive glazing and an outside balcony with glass balustrade that runs the length of the wing. French doors lead onto the balcony, from where the views of the inner and outer harbour are quite spectacular, with a constant stir of inbound and outbound seacraft.
A floor to ceiling fireplace is the centrepiece of the first floor living area, while the kitchen/dining is to the rear. It’s a huge, bright, airy space with views as far as the eye can see, carved up by the colourful sails of yachts from the nearby marina making their way seawards. To cap it all, the house is ideally orientated: south-facing, capturing the best of any sunshine.
Back out in the hallway is a wowzer staircase, with cool marble tiles and a glass balustrade.
Marble flooring of Grecian extraction is a strong theme throughout the house. The vendor had a villa in Greece, bought from the proceeds of a separate property sale in the early noughties, and fell in love with its marble tiles, so much so that during the building of Ocean Breeze, he decided to import the same tiles to Kinsale.
“I went to the marble factory in Greece and they supplied the tiles which arrived in Ireland with three Greek tilers. They did all the tiling work in the space of a month,” the owner says.
As well as the Greek influence, he’s collected various bits of furnishings from his travels over the years, professing to being “a demon for getting a van and driving across the Continent” picking up bits and bobs here and there and bringing them all back home.
With 5,000 sq ft to fill, there’s stacks of room for his acquisitions. There’s ever so much space along the various corridors which have floor-to-ceiling windows at the harbour end to maximise those views.
The main wing of the house is separated/joined by these hallways to the smaller, self-contained wing. On the first floor of this main wing, inside a splendid porch, off the main entrance hall, are two huge bedrooms, with ensuites and dressing rooms, and a real Mediterranean feel, all cool tiled floors and pale colour palettes.
As a bonus, French doors lead onto that forward facing length-of-house balcony. At ground level, beneath these bedrooms, is a self-contained suite/guest accommodation, where visitors have the luxury of two double ensuite bedrooms, a dressing room, and a living area with kitchen, where the front garden can be accessed via more French doors. The security room and utility are also at this level.
There’s lots of talking points at Ocean Breeze, but the pièce de resistance is surely on the top floor, reached via that super swish staircase, or the elevator.
It’s a ginormous family room, with a couple of sets of French doors to the balcony and a ceiling studded with veluxes, radiating light in all directions and showcasing those magnificent inner and outer harbour views, which can be savoured from the inside out or from the outside out, via that great expanse of decking and glass balustrade that is such a key feature of Ocean Breeze.
In some respects, with its many levels and different decks, and so much glass and natural light, you’re almost expecting it to make a few knots across the harbour, like some great big luxury, sparkling cruise liner. There’s even a baby grand piano in that family room for the entertainment of guests, and a fireplace at the opposite end, with grand dining and lounging in between, and concealed to the rear, an expensive-looking kitchen, and a smaller dining area.
No expense was spared on Ocean Breeze, with the best of finishes inside and out. A courtyard inside the main gates has parking for a couple of cars and there’s also a double garage, where the owner of the house indulges his pet hobby — building toy train tracks. The garden, on the seaward side, is low maintenance and includes a patio.
The owner is downsizing because his children are reared and a house the size of Ocean Breeze is simply too big. He will miss the views and the privacy — a combination not that easily available in an exuberant town like Kinsale, he says. It’s been a great home for his family, but now he is moving to be closer to grandchildren.
Ms Murphy says the property has the potential for a number of different uses, from an up-market guest house making good use of its separate wings, to a home for two generations of the same family, or a family that enjoys having guests to stay over.
“It will attract an array of buyers and the beauty about it is not only the location, at the hub of everything, yet at a small remove, but also the fact that it’s just a 20-minute drive to the exclusive Old Head of Kinsale Golf Course, and 20 minutes to Cork Airport, while the yacht club and marina are only a 10-minute walk, and the popular Spaniard pub and restaurant is a minute’s stroll down the road.
“It’s a state-of-the-art home with all the perks of living in the picturesque coastal town of Kinsale,” Ms Murphy adds.
Those perks include Kinsale’s reputation as the Gourmet Capital of Ireland, and the gateway to the Wild Atlantic Way, renowned for its breath-taking scenery and picturesque town centre, not to mention its many diverse eateries, including one Michelin star (Bastion) and its healthy social and cultural life, (music festivals, food festivals), while also being a yachter’s paradise, with two marinas and a clubhouse. Scilly itself, where Ocean Breeze is located, is just above the stunning Scilly Walk which takes you to Summercove and another iconic pub, the Bulman, and on to Charles Fort, the star-shaped military fortress that dates back to the 17th century.
Ms Murphy says apart from Scilly’s reputation as the most sought-after location in Kinsale, “it’s also quirky, quaint and picturesque”.
Fabulous vista from several different levels thanks to those balconies. Luxury living in a prized location.
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