House of the week: A piece of Paris in West Cork for €1 million

Two houses, plus 13 acres of land with nearly a mile of water frontage on Heir Island

The land and homes in an area claled Paris on Heir Island.

It's “not a bad price for 13 acres in Paris”, quips estate agent Pat Maguire as he pins a sum just shy of €1 million to his latest property listing: it’s two houses, plus 13 acres of land with nearly a mile of water frontage, at a spot on an Irish island called Paris.

“It’s the most romantic place in West Cork,” Mr Maguire ventures of this Heir Island homestead, in the glorious scattering of Carbery’s 100 Isles, in Roaringwater Bay. Here, sales of whole islands such as West Skeam and Horse Island have sold from €1m to over €5 million in the past 18 months, and a 60-acre one with ruins is due soon at c €600,000.

Here at the island hamlet of Paris, he’s selling just 13 acres of the 350 acre/1.5km2 Heir Island, by the narrow bridge on the picturesque 2.5km by 1.5km island.

As Roaringwater Bay’s many islands go (one hundred isles may be stretching it?!) it’s one of the more forgiving, relatively flat, with one of the region’s most beautiful white sand beaches, Trá Bán. It’s accessible year-round by passenger ferry from Cunnamore Pier on the mainland between Skibbereen and Ballydehob.

Heir has got a year-round population of several dozen hardy souls, and this swells to several hundreds in summer when holiday makers arrive.

In the 19th century the island’s year-round population was 200-300, but it fell foul to Famine, emigration, and ‘progress.”

Now, with its regular ferry, electricity via a sub-sea cable and broadband, might remote working in a post-pandemic era boost its population a bit more?

Heir Island is home to several businesses: a restaurant, art gallery, sailing school, guest accommodation, B&Bs and Airbnb, as well as an occasional cookery/baking school, among other enterprises, as well as a punningly-titled pizz heiria.

It captured the hearts of a German family nearly 35 years ago, when they bought one of the island’s many surviving original homes, on 13 scenically-set acres, facing over the bay towards Schull, Mount Gabriel and Ballydehob, near where actor Saoirse Ronan last year bought a holiday home by the sea near Foilnamuck for c €800,000.

The Continental couple used this property for holidays, and over the years spent more and more time here, building a second house about 20 years ago, said Mr Maguire, who reckons the chance of getting any planning grants on islands now like Heir is slim, at best. It’s a SAC (Special Area of Conservation) with a rich flora, nearly 600 identified species of flower, fern and conifer, and fauna and sea life too, with a wide array of birdlife making it especially popular with birdwatchers.

There are two public piers on Heir, which at one stage had its own school also (there’s a memorial to the children who died at the time of the Famine, when the official population was c 350, eventually dwindling to low, double digits).

Today, this 13 acre property at the western end with lots of indented shoreline has its own sheltered breakwater, moorings and private beaches.

Seven of Carbery’s 100 Islands have year-round residences, and Heir’s the fourth largest, after Cape Clear, Sherkin and Long Island, the latter directly opposite holiday hotspot Schull, with the Fastnet visible six miles out to sea.

For those scanning the horizon for an uncommon coastal property, Skibbereen-based auctioneer Pat Maguire reckons his Heir Island offer, at the western end by the bridge at Paris, is as good as it comes, with two houses and five/bedrooms between them, traditionally presented and currently sporting lots of local island art and craft on their walls.

He says the 13 acres is mostly good grazing land, and “there’s a joy in walking the mile of private shoreline, looking to the sea and the shore.”

VERDICT: Ooh, la, la. The market’s currently very hot for coastal offers such as this, and West Cork’s Paris on Heir Island has one of the region’s most regular ferry services and Mr Maguire adds “my vendors have several boats, we can arrange to include one or two in the sale too.”