Please Santa, this Crosshaven home for €610k is on the Christmas wishlist

It's a wrap: return to Canada brings gift-wrapped Crosshaven's 117 Drake's Point to a pre Christmas market for an early 2023 deal, writes Tommy Barker

Tue, 13 Dec, 2022 - 13:39

Tommy Barker. Pictures: John Roche

Crosshaven, Cork harbour
€610,000
Size	179 sq m (1,927 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	A3

“THIS was to be our ‘forever home’,” say the vendors of this brand-new home overlooking Cork harbour, heading unexpectedly back to Canada after a brief, and happy sojourn in Ireland where old West Cork roots and childhood ties were rekindled.

Wrapped up: 117 Drake's Point is the ultimate walk-in job as owners there less than a year

The duo, Orion Henderson and his wife Kim, came to Cork in 2018 from Vancouver, for a lifestyle move with amenable daughter and son.

Sunny side out: art by Maurice Hednderson-Fry

They first lived in West Cork, where Orion’s father, painter Maurice Henderson-Fry, had lived and produced art for over 40 years on the Beara peninsula (‘getting’ the raw wilderness, as well as the minute beauties before the Wild Atlantic Way became such a recognised phenomenon), then they moved for work towards Cork City for work reasons.

They rented in Carrigaline for a while and started home hunting around the coastline (old habits die hard!), having the heartbreak of not one, not two, but three sales they agreed fall through on them, through no fault of their own.

The family finally got lucky when they decided to buy brand new, at Drake’s Point hight above Crosshaven village. All importantly, their purchase-to-be was guaranteed to have water views as it was at the upper end of the last phase of developer O’Flynn Group’s Brightwater development. Ongoing since 2003, and bringing close to 400 homes to the coastal community, Brightwater, and the later “second wind in its sails/sales”, Drake’s Point, helped establish Crosshaven as a viable commuter location with strong supply of houses, bolstering and boosting local services in the near two decades since.

The same developer is doing ground works for a brand-new site for 99 homes 250m away, off the Church Bay Road along the village’s hilly ridges, where a Bronze Age discovery was recently made — showing Crosshaven as a settlement of choice as far back as 3,000 years ago, so not that new under the sun…!

Orion was quite familiar with this side of Cork county as well as West Cork as he had been a school boarder at Ashton in the city after the death of his mother, alternating his life between the wild west and the city.

Later going to Cork Institute of Technology and Imperial College in London, he met Canadian-born Kim while travelling in Amsterdam, and they’ve since lived and worked in a number of countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Mexico.

Dawn begins to break over the coastal village of Crosshaven. Picture: David Creedon / Anzenberger

Kim works in marketing (remote working from Carrigaline and Crosshaven has suited, she says) and the Educate Together school in Carrigline is where their children settled in easily over the last few years of home ownership hunting. The proximity of Coláiste Mhuire which is within a 400m walk of Drakes Point was a clincher for their decision to snap up No 117, Drakes Point, says Kim.

They have embraced Crosshaven;done sailing courses, bought kayaks (and the odd Dryrobe) and explored the harbour’s fringes; loved beaches and sea swims over the hill at spots such as Myrtleville and Fountainstown, and they got over the upset of being previously “jilted” on their plans to buy along the Coast Road betwixt those busy beaches. They also enjoyed the luxury of having an A-rated comfortable, modern family home, with super low running costs at a time of climate and energy crisis, and soaring bills.

Well, it’s the biz — and must have chimed with Orion’s previous work in British Colombia in the sustainable sector too.

Unexpectedly, a return to Vancouver beckons for the family, hence its arrival on the market this week, and it’s the first resale of one of the detached houses in this Drake’s Point section, where a gentle crescent of similar homes all get slightly different, angled views over Fort Mitchel Camden, Cork Harbour (Cobh is in view too from No 117), Crosshaven village, Currabinny, and up the Owenbue river/estuary to Drake’s Pool.

Upriver of Drake's Pool: File pic Denis Scannell

The name comes not from ducks, or drakes, but from Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century explorer (and, slaver), who circumnavigated the globe in his day. A hero to the English and the Crown in Tudor days, he was seen as a pirate by rival Spanish voyagers, who in 1589 pursued his fleet of five vessels into Cork harbour with their far larger fleet. He found safe hiding in a wooded bend in the estuary which now bears the name Drake’s Pool, still a safe anchoring point for yachts, 430 years on.

No 117 comes for sale with estate agents Ann O’Mahony and Linda O’Donovan of Sherry FitzGerald, who guide at €610,000. They note that it is the first resale of any of the 17 detacheds in Drake’s Point, so expect very keen interest.

Rear view: owners in just one year, so next occupants get to make their own stamp on fully finished detached home

Their vendors bought off-plan via Sherry Fitz, committing a few years ago and getting their own say in final finishes such as kitchen, flooring (engineered boards, carpeting) and tiling.

The Price Register shows 199 sales at Drake’s Point, the highest being €605,000 for No 105 at the start of this year, and up towards the top of the most recent sales is that of this home, No 117, for €489,999. (A number were sold from new for under €500,000 as the developer O’Flynn Group were keen to have them qualify for the help to buy scheme price point threshold, it’s understood.)

The Henderson family only moved in as recently as May of this year, so it really is “as-new”, just fully finished and ready for landscaping to be enhanced in the enclosed rear garden come spring 2023, after the current cold snap eases.

No 117 has been getting its “first Christmas” decorations up in the past few days: The family will be back in snowy Canada for Christmas 2023, and some other family currently on the home hunt in and around Cork will have nailed down this purchase. Among those likely to feature in the bidding are those who lost out on these 1,927 sq ft four-bed detacheds on their first time on the market.

Two of the four bedrooms are en suite: this front one has harbour and Currabinny views

Drake’s Point comprises a mix of such detacheds (17 in all) as well as semi-ds and short-run four-home terraces in the main, which are at the more affordable end of the spectrum, with a number selling in the broad €200,000 to €300,000 price range, and the site’s slope means the crescent where No 117 is pretty unobstructed to the all-important front (pic, above), while there’s a ring of terraced homes marginally higher up, behind a retaining wall.

Great internal floor plan and pleasant exterior of these Drake's Point homes

Designed by architects Doyle McDonogh Nash, these bigger homes appear to use the same brick on the lower half of their front facades as seen in O’Flynn’s Ballinglanna development over in Glanmire. Most of Drake’s Point and Brightwater below are painted render, so there’s a different, warmer appearance from the get-go.

Internally there’s a warm feel too, partly down to an air-to water heat pump which keeps a neat 21C via underfloor heating at ground level, but the real warmth comes from the abundant art works, pretty much all of them done by Orion’s father Maurice during his long career and assembled since, or kept in family hands.

The late Maurice Henderson-Fry, born at the tail end of the Second World War in 1944 to a Canadian father (who’d served in the war) and English mother, passed away in 2017, after living in West Cork. He’d trained at Farnham College and Goldsmiths in London and moved full-time to West Cork in the early 1970, part of a wave of British and European ‘blow-ins’ who embraced a simpler life in Ireland, most typically along the coastline.

Henderson-Fry has exhibited in Cork and Dublin since the 1980s, and had been working on a solo show at the time of his death in Skibbereen Residential Care Centre in 2017 (he’d had Parkinson’s for years). As a mark of respect, the Beara Arts Festival dedicated its 2018 event to him, with a

retrospective of his work, mostly colourful works in oils, floral, plant based, or scenic, most typically West Cork scenes.

These house types, the “As”, have an excellent floor plan with all of their 1,900+ sq ft over two levels, and they feel bigger than they actually are.

There’s a central hall beyond an energy-efficient composite-built front door (currently complete with Christmas wreath and festive decor), with den/home office off to the right, with views.

To the left is the main reception room, sharing the same views (save for the Christmas tree’s temporary presence) with engineered oak floor and electric fire for visual cosines, and both rooms are single aspect, facing the water and miles of vista.

The hall is tiled in porcelain, as is the guest WC to the right, and this bathroom has a trick up its sleeve — a door to the side which leads into a U-shaped cloakroom/coat store/super useful storage area making the most use of every square foot under the stairs, even if not the most ‘social’ of access points!

Beyond the hall is a full-width kitchen/dining/living room, about 22ft by 18ft, a really good size and shape with rear garden access to the side. There’s also a decent utility/plant room with external access to the side.

Units are in a charcoal grey colour, with quartz tops, island, and integrated appliances (all electric), included in the sale as are the barely stepped-on carpets, lighting, and a steel garden shed for sports equipment storage, which cost c €3,000.

Artful: a calm peaceful morning on the Owenabue estuary with the fog beginning to dissipate at Drake's Pool. Picture David Creedon

Unlikely to form part of the sale is the free-standing corner suite for the family’s pet cat — a play centre with climbing and scratching posts and toddler-like toys for a bit of a beast, a Maine Coon cat, native of North America, sometimes referred to as “the dogs of the cat world” given their playful personality quirks and the ruffed species with bushy, raccoon-like tails and which can weigh up to 5kg.

A carpeted staircase, with painted spindles and an oak handrail, leads past a tall, gable window with clear glass to a carpeted landing with family bathroom with bath and four bedrooms, all doubles and three are decent-sized ones.

Two are carpeted and two are floored with engineered boards; two of the four have ensuite shower rooms, one to the front for views, one to the back, and two have built-in wardrobes.

There’s pull-down Stira stair access in the landing to an attic which is now about to be cleared out as rapidly as it filled up as the family (and monster cat) prepare to decamp across the North Atlantic in the coming months.

Right now, it holds quite a portfolio of paintings by Orion’s dad, Maurice, which will be passed on to his grandchildren in the future as a momento of their Irish roots, and Irish sojourn.