A dream seaside home in West Cork's Schull for €1.2m

Coosheen Cois Farraige Schull

Schull, West Cork
€1.2m
Size	140 sq m (1,500 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	E1

This water-fronting home in Schull, accurately called Cois Farraige ( “beside the sea”), is truly steeped in local history. In fact, it goes right back to copper-mining days at this Coosheen location.

It’s handily just off the SUV-beaten track of Schull, but veteran estate agent Jim O’Keeffe of agency James Lyons O’Keeffe (JLOK) recalls earlier days of Cois Farraige’s history, from his boyhood days.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner, the local auctioneer, who’s in his 90th year, says he remembers going over from Colla Road to Coosheen in a family-owned punt boat with his father which was powered by a puttering Seagull engine (around since 1931). They were visiting a Mr Galway at this very spot, at an earlier boathouse, which had a winch with old steel rail tracks for getting larger boats in and out of the water.

In memories redolent of classic childhood books –such as Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons – Jim says as youngsters they would be roared at to “stop!” before they drowned or got hurt.

He clearly survived, and recalls even further back into researches from Rome and local lore, to tales of monks coming over in earlier centuries from Southeast England to this spot at Coosheen for vines.

Today, for anyone with a property in Coosheen, or the Colla Road across the harbour, it’s all champagne days as property values around Schull have skyrocketed. Many a modest home here might be worth €1m or more. Ye gods.

Cois Farraige is a decent 1,500 sq ft four-bed home towards the far end of a cul de sac road. More modern mansions and contemporary one-offs are dotted along the 2.5km strip of road out from Schull.

That’s 2.5km by car, but of course, it’s a tad shorter trip by boat (more likely a RIB now than punt with a Seagull outboard motor).

Auctioneer Colm Cleary of JLOK is handling Cois Farraige’s sale for a family living in the UK. They built it about 20 years ago as a holiday home, via Schull builder Timmy Barnett.

The family is not getting over as much as they used to, so it’s being sold with a price guide of €1.2m.

There has only been a handful of resales with a “Coosheen, Schull” address in the past decade, the strongest being that of Water’s Edge in 2017 at a recorded €950,000.

However, several houses in the area could be of the same ilk nowadays (water-fronting Cuan Bán on the Colla Road, with its own pier, made €2.1m in 2019 and has since largely been rebuilt).

The sales blurb for Cois Farraige reads that it “does not translate as ‘toes in the water,’ but it is as near as be damned. What more could one want: a house on the waterfront, in the sheltered waters of Schull Harbour, with a beach for that early-morning plunge, a slipway for the tender and a mooring for the cruiser.”

That about sums it up, bar mentioning that the house is a very robust 2000s dormer; two-up, two-down, with one en suite, a living room with a stone fireplace and a hall. The interior features a lot of wood, with a pine kitchen and exposed ceiling beams downstairs.

It’s all in grand order, yet likely to be altered by its next owners, if not massively extended, if they are buying at what’s now a pretty elevated price level.

The grounds include a stone patio, lawn and basic old stone outbuildings (possibly going back to copper-mining days) facing the shingle beach (the old slipway is long gone, but the property next door has a sort of jetty).

VERDICT: With a number of strong sales to his credit locally since Covid-19 struck, Colm Cleary says Cois Farraige is “the sort of place one dreams of owning: here’s your opportunity to make that dream a reality”. You just might need the dream Lotto win too?