Gold star for stunning Dingle Lodestar

Catherine Shanahan is wowed by a unique home in an unbeatable location above Dingle Harbour

Lodestar, Dingle

Dingle, Co Kerry
€725,000
Size	279 sq m (3000 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	B2

FOUR kids, a small boat and strict instructions not to hurry home gave rise to creative navigation games around Dingle Harbour, and ultimately, a name for this exquisitely located house.

“I would bring the kids, aged 3 to 13, out on the water with me to give my wife a bit of downtime. To keep them entertained, I would get them to do old-style navigation, picking out points of reference around the harbour,” the father of the house says.

“We could see our own house and we would use it as a reference point. I’d say ‘There’s our lodestar’ — a nautical term for a star or point that acts as a navigational aid for sailors.

“We’d head in that direction and we’d do this for a couple of hours until the youngest would say ‘I want to go home to Lodestar’.” And so, by a process of osmosis, the two-storey, architect-designed home — with unbeatable views of Dingle and Ventry Harbours, Dingle Bay, and onwards, to the Atlantic Ocean — gained a formal name.

Lodestar has star quality, but not without a lot of hard work.

First there was the site search. After a decade of living in Dingle town, the couple in question decided it would be a nice idea to migrate outwards, but not so far that the town’s amenities were out of reach. They used to run, walk, and cycle on Ballinaboula hill behind the town, and had looked for a site there for years.

“It was difficult. The land was owned by farmers who were not keen to sell. We had a path worn to the local auctioneer and then one day my wife called on spec and he had a site for sale on about half an acre.

“It was a steep site, covered in gorse in the most fabulous position. In fact it was hardly a site at all. My father saw it and said it was fabulous looking but didn’t know how we would develop it.

“We brought in a young architect, Declan Noonan. It was two years in the planning. We had two children when it started. By the time it was built, we had three, and we had our fourth shortly after moving in. We allowed for the house to be versatile from the start,” the man of the house says.

Lodestar was built in 2001 and adapted as the family grew, with a substantial redesign and extension in 2013, by architect Steve White.

He reconfigured the internal layout, moving the kitchen, opening it up at one end, with a 4m sliding patio door and an apex window above the doors, slotting into the double-height ceiling, and an open arch into a gorgeous living area with picture windows looking out over those mesmerising views.

They even managed to move an AGA, drilling down under the metal plate it was built on and lifting it up on rollers with a mini forklift, with six burly builders to roll it into its new position. The AGA has been central to family life, the owner says, with grown kids returning home during lockdown, and all cooking, maybe six different menus on any given day.

The floor they are treading on during this cooking is made from German Jura limestone, formed from sedimentation in an area that was once tropical lagoons and, to their surprise, they’ve spotted little fossils embedded in those tiles over the years.

“We’ve spotted different animal shapes compressed in the limestone, and every so often, we’ll spot something new.” 

Another eye-catching feature is the vaulted ceiling garden room with French doors, where a baby grand piano takes pride of place and where a self-taught son churns out classical tunes. 

Double doors lead from the garden room to another gorgeous lounge.

There’s also a study, a utility, a snug, and WC downstairs, and upstairs, four bedrooms, with a walk-in wardrobe, ensuite, and feature glass block wall in the main bedroom. One of the remaining bedrooms is also ensuite, and there’s a main bathroom and an office.

Outdoors is equally magnificent. Initially, the owners thought there was little hope of creating a garden on the gorse-covered hill, but backbreaking dedication, a crowbar, a pickaxe, and compost, got them off to a good start and now it’s a sort of subtropical paradise, with an array of terraces — from limestone paving immediately to the rear, to a secluded timber deck terrace at a lower level — beyond which the land drops down, with killer views in every direction.

The man of the house says 279 sq m Lodestar has stood them well and “done its job for us, once the family was reared”, albeit they were all back during lockdown, delighted to have fibre broadband and lots of office space. (There’s also a detached garage suitable for conversion to a home office/granny flat). He will miss the stunning panoramas, the moonlight on the water, the connection with the outdoors thanks to those double height windows (“Foxes walk past the glass, right in front of us”).

Handling the sale and guiding at €725,000 is Paul Stephenson of Sherry Fitzgerald Stephenson Crean. He describes it as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy a magnificent home overlooking Dingle Harbour”.

Interest so far is both national and international. “Will it be a holiday home? It’s hard to call at this stage, but there is very strong interest. There’s only one Dingle and this is an absolute prime property. I would expect it to make well above the asking price,” he says.

VERDICT: Hard to argue with the man when he says it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.