Leap's shipshape Captain's House on the market for €745k
Glen setting above Leap village's cascade for the Captain's (or, captains') House, guided at €745,000 by auctioneer Maeve McCarthy
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Leap, West Cork |
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€745,000 |
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Size |
217 sq m (2,350 sq ft) |
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Bedrooms |
4 |
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Bathrooms |
2 |
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BER |
E1 |
BOOKENDED over its 100-year history with by captains of the sea and the air is The Captain’s House, a lovely, pristine Edwardian style home by a stream, and a glen, on the edge of West Cork’s Leap village.
It’s set at the aptly named Glenside, a few hundred metres above the picturesque village on the N71m between Clonakilty and Skibbereen; just below this property the stream at its boundary cascades under the road to join the sea, at the top of Glandore Harbour, having run just a few short miles from Ballinlough Lake a few miles inland.
This steep glen, gully or gorge section is what gave the village of Leap its name (locals won’t be long in correcting any errant mispronunciation, pointing out it’s ‘Lep’), associated with more lawless times when an O’Donovon Chieftain escaped the long arms and legs of the law by jumping the ravine on his horse, a feat his pursuers were unable to match.
It prompted the local saw and lore of ‘Beyond the Leap, beyond the Law’ as a sort of lawless wilderness: some would say elements of it still remain, but that’s only roguery - it’s all now an Irish property hotspot, on the edge of Europe, and the Wild Atlantic Way.
The 1902-built Captain’s House was built day one for a sea captain, robust as might be expected, grander indeed than the more traditional 19th-century farmhouses and village terraced homes that might have neighboured it, and its setting safe from the sea recalls the even earlier days when shipping would have made its way up the few miles from the sea and Glandore harbour to Leap.
Today, Leap is silted up at low tides, while boats of any stature ply their wares at Union Hall, a thriving fishing port and holiday destination, and yachts and dinghies bob at Glandore, where multi-million euro house values lead West Cork’s already upper echelons.
Selling agent today of The Captain’s House is Maeve McCarthy of Charles P McCarthy auctioneers in Skibbereen, picking up the sales baton from her father Charlie who sold it to the current owners 20 years ago, and he’d already sold it several times prior also.
Previous owners included a school teacher family the McMahons, performance artist Martin Van Haselberg who is married to actor Bette Midler, and who’d previously bought in West Cork while he was part of a touring duo the Kipper Kids, travelling Europe in an old VW combi van.
He was long-haired and hippyish at the time, agent Charlie McCarthy recalls and coincidentally this home’s subsequent owner was the Cork singer-songwriter Sinead Lohan, immediately identifiable at the height of her 1990s international career thanks to her cornrow braided hair, and known for gently sung, folk-inspired and deeply poetic lyrics.
Buyers from Sinead Lohan and her partner around 2001 were a couple with inland West Cork, Ballineen roots (hers), and others on the River Blackwater at Fermoy, where his family have a high-quality joinery business doing lots of fine, period homes along that salubrious stretch of other prime Cork real estate(!).
An early childhood building model aircraft led to a deep love of flying and all things aeronautical.
He joined the Irish Air Corps and, on retirement, became a captain with Air Lingus, and the couple made the leap to Leap Dublin to rear their family of three at Glenview.
“We fell for it right away, as soon as we saw the windows, we bought a dream: it was instant love,” the woman of the house recalls of the day they travelled to view, not having looked at a single other ‘contender’ relocation home before committing.
It was already a lovely home, with charm in its glen setting, design, double aspect rooms, those gorgeous sash windows now faithfully conserved or reproduced, but not to the same calibre or size it is now.
The couple extended in a matching style on the eastern end, and added a bespoke sun room in timber crafted frames under a slate roof with salvaged red terracotta ridge tiles, gaining a new, split level and triple aspect main living room linking to the sunroom below, with sun terrace outside, with cobblestone terrace, getting all day and evening sunlight.
Above, they got a new, large main bedroom so that now there are four first-floor bedrooms, and they worked with utter sympathy with the original features, while adding comfort and longevity all along the way.
Retained are the original encaustic floor tiles in the wainscoted hall (and in the large utility), which experts reckon came from Wales, probably thanks to the original (sea) captain’s travels. Notable too are the low door heights at the first-floor level’s original ‘half,’ and there’s a stunning, re-enamelled long and tapered roll-top cast iron bath, in a fully tiled main bathroom.
The low-rise stairs too is original, and the windows and various bays and seating spots in them are a stand-out feature, with six over-one-pane arrangements in most. Clues as to which of the windows are original are in slight slumping of the glass in some, and windows catches are brass, as are some of the old door handles.
The mix of retained old material works well with new, sympathetic additions and standout are the pitch pine floors in the reception rooms, with unusual blown warm air underfloor heating, coming up through beautifully crafted timber slats and vents with copper pipes, modelled on the system in the Glucksman Gallery in UCC.
Pitch pine also features in the handrail between the main living room and the lower dining section, with a heat-soaking tiled floor here at the sunroom end. Period feel is added to by the hardwood painted French doors, with insets of small, etched deep red and blue stained glass.
Joinery work throughout is to a high level, with a painted solid wood kitchen, with units almost with an Elizabethan style around the electric Aga oven, painted in Farrow & Ball pigeon grey, topped with black granite work surfaces.
There’s a pantry/utility off the kitchen, about the size of a standard kitchen in many family homes, also with good quality units painted and there’s a half-door to the back of the property.
At the other end of the kitchen is a bay window with an inbuilt, cushioned seat, one of the best spots to see the garden glories outside, while one of the owner’s very favourite rooms of all is the double aspect living room, with gable bow window that the owners fell for day-one from the outside and on the first glimpse.
Now, the room within is comfortable, with large sofas and seating, an integrated stove in a marble chimney breast, and there’s a restful library feel, with a wall of bookshelves, displaying a wide breadth of topics, including poetry: no surprise that woman of the house loves literature and poetry as she’s a teacher of English at a West Cork secondary school.
The family has already completed a new build elsewhere on the golden coastline, education years are coming to an end and The Captain’s House is ready for new and caring occupiers.
It’s on an acre, exceptionally private, within a two-minute walk of Leap and its bars, music venue (the legendry venue Connolly’s of Leap), post office and shops, while routes off the N71 lead to myriad coves and beaches, islands and hidden spots, or thriving Union Hall, or the look-out that is imperious Glandore itself and its top drawer properties.
(The latest to show on the Price Register is the Georgian Stone Hall, at €3.4m (also via Chas McCarthys), sold to US-based buyers who held a major celebratory catered summer party there and on Rabbit Island by Squince Harbour earlier this month: it was the second big West Cork part gig of summer 2022, after Graham Norton’s wedding celebrations down in Ahakista and Bantry House, while another major wedding event was scheduled for this week at Castlefreke Castle, for ‘keeper of the castle’ Stephens Evans Freke and his partner and who has spent the last 20 years on its restoration and on its farmyard cluster, its 170s acres of grounds, rare breed cattle herds and small lake with swans.)
Back at Leap, meanwhile, the project undertaken also about 20 years back and now fully realised is priced at €745,000 by auctioneer Maeve McCarthy, and who can expect West Cork buyer interest, as well as relocation inquiries from much further afield.
A four-bed pristine period style four bed (one of which is pretty small) of 2,350 sq ft, it will suit couples as much as families, and the grounds include sun-trap patios, a tree house up top in the dense growth, and the paved and cobbled terraces with Liscanor ‘moher’ stone and impressive limestone steps to the front door.
The sloping acre is landscaped and planted to match the site’s existing maturity, with stately ash trees, acers, rhododendron, bamboo and flower beds, and it’s privately set, up a short drive with possible scope for a second dwelling/garden room on a portion by the road which leads uphill and inland towards Ballinlough lake (popular for fishing) and Corran Lake, with a meandering necklace of road leading to places further such as Drinagh and Reenascreena…..known in general local catch-all terms as “the back of Leap.”
VERDICT: This fine family home has made the 100-year leap from a sea captain to Irish Air Corps and Aer Lingus captain’s labour of love, so has well-earned the right to move the possessive apostrophe from the singular Captain’s House to the plural of Captains’ House.
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