Land this €795k catch by Waterville lakeside and Hogs Head hideaway

Go the whole hog with fishing, golf and fantastic scenery at Ring of Kerry retreat by €75m Hogs Head golf hideaway

Lakelands House has seven acres by Waterville's Lough Currane

Sat, 18 Dec, 2021 - 12:55

Tommy Barker

Waterville, Ring of Kerry
€795,000
Size	640 sq m (6,850 sq ft)
Bedrooms	12
Bathrooms	13
BER	B2

WELL, there’s no keeping up with the neighbours at this stunningly-set Waterville property.

Lakelands House Waterville Lough Currane

The ‘gaff’ just up the road was developed at a reported cost of €75 million, and includes an upmarket lodge with 45 suites, spa, bar and restaurant and wine cellar, a handful of holiday cottages, 18-hole golf course served by a Gulfstream jet and three dedicated, branded helicopters pushing the name and logo of Hogs Head.

Hogs Head Golf Club in Waterville, by Lough Currane

Developed by US financiers and American to its groomed fingertips (yet in an unmistabakly Irish setting), Waterville’s Hogs Head Golf Resort opened gently in 2018, dependent on elite US types jetting and dropping in, and set out to out-do the Old Head of Kinsale in terms of pandering to the super-rich, the indolent, pampered and the golf-obsessed.

Sure, Covid-19 must have impacted on the core clientele, but the new 18-hole course by Lough Currane (designed by Robert Trent Jones Jnr, pictured bottom centre) continues to garner international plaudits, and its developers will just have had to bed down their indulgent investment until international travel recovers, and it gets back in the swing of things.

Hogs Head was developed by Wall Street moneymen Bryan Marsal and Tony Alvarez : their professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal handled the break-up/bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers after 2008, so they seem to know risk. They developed here from 2014 on the Ring of Kerry at Waterville having swooped on the old Waterville Lake Hotel and Skellig Bay Golf Club, along the shores of Lough Currane.

Now, the chance to buy into this exclusive echelon – which also has the older Waterville Golf Course nearby among many other amenities - has come along with the arrival of Lakelands House, a former blocky B&B/country guesthouse just a long drive or a stone’s skip or two along the shoreline from the uber-private Hogs Head at this world-renowned salmon and sea trout angling lake, reckoned to be one of Ireland’s finest.

Water frontage, land (seven acres) and two boathouses come with Lakelands House

Lakelands House is on seven acres of ground fronting the 2,500 acre lough, and includes two simple boathouses and 22 moorings for anglers, with gillies available locally, and some noted fishing spots dotted around adjacent smaller linked loughs and runs also before Lough Currane empties into Ballinskelligs Bay.

As a guest venue, Lakelands House (with some self-catering options previously advertised) has traditionally catered for a fishing and shooting brigade, getting strong guest reviews since the 2000s, and comprises a large 12- bedroomed dormer, built nearly 50 years ago in the 1970s, and extended in the 1990s so that there’s now about 6,500 sq ft within.

Many of its rooms have stunning scenic lake and mountain views, including some from balconies, in a setting much loved by the late comedic actor Charlie Chaplin who was a regular Waterville habitue (pic, bottom right.).

It’s an end-of-year market arrival, listed with estate agent Michael O’Donovan of Savills, Cork, with a €795,000 AMV.

Might it be bought as a business still? Possibly, and it has enough attractions on its Ring of Kerry doorstep to continue to draw guests, from trips to the Skelligs and spanning golf and angling to walks, cycles and visiting archaeological sights, with monastic remains on Church Island across the lake, while the four standing stones at the 3-4,000-year-old megalithic tomb Eightercua, about 30’ long and with stones up to nine feet tall, are on farm land adjacent to Lakelands House.

More likely, though, is that it will be ‘taken private,’ and perhaps creatively reimagined as a luxury, lakeside retreat.

If this is its fate, a good architect might be brought on board to open up rooms and views, and taking out back walls and replacing them with glass, lots of glass (images on the Hogs Head website of its lodge and holiday cottages might be used as a template?!)

Might that course’s US-based developer/owners be tempted to add to their Waterville portfolio?

The Property Price Register shows just four Waterville properties selling for over €500,000 in the past decade. Two made over €800,000 and one, at the Celtic Tiger times-delivered Cloisters development, No 2, shows just shy of €1 million, at €977,500 in 2017, but at that appears to be a price outlier in the Cloisters scheme

VERDICT: Go the whole hog? Sizeable house, on seven acres in a sublime setting.