Kilkee surfing the boom of a fourth wave of popularity as €450k period home floats buyers' boats

Cherished and charming coastal Co Clare home 3 Victoria Terrace is a Wild Atlantic Way  gem, and attracting huge interest  

Essence of charm: 3 Victoria Terrace,  Kilkee for sale with agent Geoff de Courcy of Property Partners de Courcy O'Dwyer

Kilkee, Co Clare

€450,000

Size: 163 sq m (1,768 sq ft)

Bedrooms: 5

Bathrooms: 3

BER: G

CO Clare’s Kilkee is going through what may be its fourth wave of popularity, in some 200 years, thanks to a Covid-19 surge in demand for coastal and lifestyle properties. 

For those on the relocating hunt, could they find anything more charming than the period home at 3 Victoria Terrace?

Bay view from bay window

The immaculate terraced lodge, with ts period charm unsullied, is on a very deep site, has over 1,750 sq ft within and site/extension scope, but tops of it all is a setting facing the sea at the East End, George Head and Chimney Bay, and the seaside resort’s very own bandstand: it’s quintessentially Kilkee.

Fishing for mackerel from the top of the cliffs between Kilkee and LoopHead in Clare.

Long before the Wild Atlantic Way found sway, the resort community started its tourism journey 200 years ago, in 1820, when a ferry from Limerick to Kilrush put Kilkee on a visitors’ map and holiday horizon, drawing appreciative  visitors for bathing and beauty from all over Ireland and Britain, including Charlotte Bronte, who chose to honeymoon here.

Kilkee got another surge in the 1890s, when the West Clare Railway opened up even easier access, and it was the start of many families’ inter-generational ties to the burgeoning coastal village.

The late, great Limerick actor Richard Harris at the  Dunlicky coastline in Kilkee Co. Clare in 2008 where he was making a documentary about his life in Limerick & Kilkee.Pic.Brian Gavin/Press 22

It grew again in the Celtic Tiger era,  with an array of holiday homes grafted around its fringes and dotted in its core, but little or nothing ever came close in appeal to the centrally located Victorian originals, such as No 3.

Now, with a global pandemic and staycationing bringing a new energy (along with the attractions of sea swimming, great diving, angling and many other marine activities) there’s competing buyer demand from holiday home hunters, and those who want to make the move to the wild west coast for good.

Bandstand on the doorstep of 3 Victoria Terrace 

Estate agent Geoff de Courcy of Property Partners de Courcy O’Dwyer can expect both types at 3 Victoria Terrace,  priced at €450,000. He describes it as a “charming Victorian beach-front lodge,” in a destination as popular now as ever in its 19th-century heyday, with some of Ireland’s best swimming, and cliff walks.

The vendors have enjoyed it since the mid-1900s, and members still tell tales of previous occupants, recalled as the White Sisters.  “They weren’t nuns, as their name might suggest, but rather two sisters from Enniskillen, 

Fermanagh who holidayed in Kilkee during the summer months. Their attire consisted of white nun-like habits, with white head gear, white shoes, gloves, shopping bags …..and they even had two small white dogs with them at one time.

Cooling down from the warm weather at the Pollock Holes in Kilkee, Co. Clare (2018 image) was Saffron Di Lucia, Cratloe Co. Clare. Picture: Alan Place

“Much to the amusement of the locals they enjoyed going outside when it was raining and would sing and dance in the rain. It was noticed that they would extend their stay if the weather was wild, wet and stormy. As children, we remember being amazed by these sisters,” remarks one of the vendors, with crystal clear recall, of halcyon holidays here.

Interior retains old world feel

Now, it’s time for new owners to forge their own Kilkee memories, with No 3 willing and able to provide the backdrop, and to rediscover the joys of “a glorious watering place, with the finest shore I have ever seen” and “such an ocean-view as I have not yet seen and such battling of the waves as I have never imagined”, as detailed by Charlotte Bronte in 1854, after her marriage to curate Arthur Bell Nicholls (the couple honeymooned in Ireland, in Offaly and Kilkee, and the woman who penned Jane Eyre died a year later, during pregnancy, aged just 39.)

Early maps of Kilkee showed 240 houses in the town in the 1840s, including Victoria Place/Terrace. and agent Geoff de Couryc adds of No 3 “the location of this lodge would be hard to surpass.” 

Short haul to happy holidays or full-time home?

Original features of the villa-like home, with a deep floor plan, up to five bedrooms plus attic rooms, include deep, canted bay windows, wood paneling, Victorian fireplaces, a pilaster door case with a square over-door window, and high ceilings.

Further potential to the rear of 3 Victoria Terrace,  Kilkee

There’s 30m of front garden, fringed by peonies, and behind is an even longer garden, about 50m, rear entrance, private off-street parking and possibly building scope.

The Price Register shows almost 800 house sales in Kilkee since 2010, but only one in all those years at Victoria Terrace, with no 2 selling in 2011, at the property market’s low-tide nadir, for €325,000.

VERDICT: Pure Kilkee.