Ultimate refuge at €1.85m  seaside sanctuary on a Blue Flag West Cork beach

Inchydoney's high-end Tearmann has a gym with sauna/home cinema, but the scene setter and scene-stealer is the site overlooking the ocean and one of Munster's best-loved beaches

Sitting pretty at Tearmann's money-shot, overlooking Dunmore. Agent Maeve McCarthy guides at €1.85m 

Inchydoney Island, West Cork
€1.85 million
Size	235 sq m (2,510 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3/4 with gym/cinema
Bathrooms	4
BER	B2

WEST Cork’s wonderful, Inchydoney Island and its twin, golden Blue Flag beaches are having a moment in the sun — both in terms of popularity with visitors and holidaymakers, and even more recently, in property values and upgrades of some of the seaside resort’s housing stock.

Tearmann's setting near the four-star spa and resort  hotel

Tearmann replaced an earlier bungalow on the 0.6 acre site

In terms of values, think suddenly going up to and over €1m for a spot/site with some of the best of the views, or €1.5m to €2m for the best-finished homes on equally top sites, and nudging back toward €500,000 once more, for some of the better two-bed apartments next to the four-star Inchydoney Lodge and Spa Hotel.

The 500-acre island, linked to the mainland and Clonakilty Bay by two causeways done in Famine-era times, is home now to as many as 100 houses, plus the eponymous four-star resort and spa hotel with adjoining apartment blocks, each with ocean views, built about 25 years ago and which replaced an early 1900s hotel, famed for its ballroom and function receptions in earlier decades.

Over the past few decades, many of the older homes have been upgraded, or knocked and replaced.

A number right now are works in progress; some basic chalet-style houses still remain, and every year more and more owners are becoming more and more regularly full-time residents.

Blue flag beach within a two-minute sandals trot

The trend stepped up a notch during covid lockdowns, when Inchydoney came into its own, accessible to Clonakilty town during the strictest of lockdown travel restrictions, and many families decamped here for months on end while pandemic worries raged, when social distancing reigned, and when sea swimming went off the deep end in terms of popularity.

The London-based owner of Tearmann appreciated all of this. Appropriately, the house name means” sanctuary”, or “refuge”, and she moved over to this architect-designed beachside house at Inchydoney, one completely redesigned to appreciate the setting, views, aspect and beach proximity... put at just about 100m down the way, by auctioneer Maeve McCarthy.

Interior

Now three years after the pandemic panic, unforseen outcomes, and lifestyle upheavals for better or for worse, the woman responsible along with architect Chris Ralphs for the glorious result that is Tearmann has decided to sell. She’s not getting enough use of it subsequently, says Ms McCarthy, who’s Skibbereen-based and whose firm Charles P McCarthy has like many other West Cork agents seen some remarkable demand and prices secured for coastal Cork properties.

One doesn’t have to look far at all for examples... in fact, the house right next door to Tearmann is an example.

Called Laguna, the chalet-style 1,100 sq ft house just west alongside it is on a sloping site and went to market in February 2023 with a €545,00 AMV. By March we reported it had been bid to c €1.15m after more than 70 bids, with three parties chasing Laguna up to and over the €1m mark.

Laguna, a chalet next to Tearmann at  Inchydoney is 'sale agreed' at well over €1m

Laguna is now “sale agreed”, but the agents there (Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill) don’t right now confirm at what eventual price level.

At that sort of sum, though, it’s safe to assume that it’s being bought for its site (access from top and bottom of the chicane bend leading down to the beaches from the high approach road) and if a buyer is spending that much it’s another good bet that a fairly special house will be built to replace Laguna, subject to planning permission.

Tearmann's main bedroom, with stove and free-standing bath

In contrast, the adjacent 2,500 sq ft Tearmann is a fully finished entity, done to a very high, sleek and contemporary standard, without being in any way flashy, inside or out. Selling agent Ms McCarthy guides it at €1.85m, and confidently says that a buyer could be in residence for this coming summer, and that it will suit as equally as a full-time or second/holiday home retreat.

Tearmann’s arrival on the market had been expected in local circles in the past few months, and now its price level is underpinned by the sum being paid at Laguna, the fact there was such demand for it (many of the viewers had local links going back years to Clonakilty and Inchydoney, even if currently living abroad, it’s understood). It sees the greater Clonakilty district edge more into the €1m+ price bracket for its high-end homes, with several results at the “magic mill” mark in the past year, and it seems to be continuing into 2023 and beyond.

Hot property: gym has an infra-red sauna

Just last month, Ms McCarthy listed a modern 2,200 sq ft box dormer home, The Breakers, architect designed with large first-floor kitchen/diner behind very large windows on the Dunmore Road facing Inchydoney. It’s set on the inland side of the water-fronting road, by two waterfront wonders, out to the high-grade Dunmore House Hotel and towards Ardfield: The Breakers came under immediate offer, and is already sale agreed in excess of €1.1m.

So, it seems select coastal Clonakilty homes are approaching Kinsale or Glandore price levels, with a premium on views, or exception settings, period status or walk-in condition.

Tearmann scores on several fronts: Most obvious the seaside setting; the money-shot views from within; the quality of the design and appearance; the as-new condition; a B2 BER, and proximity to Clonakilty, with Cork Airport and city just an hour’s drive away.

The Virgin Mary Bank name came from a tale of sailors founding on the rocks after they jeered and mocked a beautiful woman on the headland, said by locals to have been the Madonna. In any case, the setting is heavenly.

Here now is a landscaped garden in front of the hotel with hard and soft/grassy surfaces, there’s a lifeguard hut and slip to the east beach in front of the apartment blocks, and lovers of nature are spoiled for choice, for walks, and for water activities.

For those who love the sea year round (and whoever buys here is sure to) there’s an outdoor hot or cold shower for sluicing off the sand and rinsing wetsuits, and upstairs, an end gable room is done out as a multi-use space with gym potential. It also has an electric, infra-red sauna, as well as a home-cinema set up complete with a short row of old flip-up old cinema seat from a Parisian movie house.

Sea gull's view of Tearmann's setting

Tearmann stands on the same site footprint as an earlier mid-20th century dormer bungalow (our Irish Examiner files of aerial images of Inchydoney show an almost generic, anywhere bungalow here previously), and some of its footprint might even have carried over to what’s here now. If it did, it’s indecipherable from the end-to-end quality that’s here now.

Builder was Tim McCarthy of Concept Design & Build in Skibbereen, who produced top finishes inside and out, with gas-fired underfloor heating, spa grade bathrooms with plain white sanitary ware, windows are double glazed alu-clad Velfac V200, with with marine-grade anodised aluminium outer facings and the large slider was by Vendor VS.

Oh la la. Home cinema with seats from a  Parisienne theatre

Tearmann has three entrances, plus large sliding windows and access to two balconies, one quite bridge-like to the back, off the large first-floor main bedroom suite (the private first floor is almost an apartment in its own right with the loft end cinema/gym/sauna, storage, the very large double-aspect bedroom off it, with dressing room and bathroom with standalone bath, plus balcony access).

Want just a touch more luxury? Well, this aloof loft suite has its own wood-burning stove. Nice.

The most-used ground-level entry point is at the gable, straight into the kitchen/diner main dramatic living section, where the owner has thoughtfully included a secure, large dog flap able to let any size dog (or cat) in or out at will when unlocked.

The all-weather money shot

There’s also outdoor access to the rear via the utility, while a door at the western end almost mid-ships opens to a high-ceilinged vestibule with tranquil seating area, and with split-level access to the main living end, or on to the two ground-floor en suite bedrooms, both with baths.

A clever touch is the way a sliding door can fully, or partially, conceal the en suite bathroom, so there’s an option to soak in the tub, while looking out at the ocean, in all weathers and all lights.

Bathrooms have metro tiles and Italian porcelain flooring, and the main living area has a wide Stovax wood-burning stove under a plain limestone mantle, with overhead TV, while a few supporting steel beams in no way occlude any of that all essential and expansive ocean vista.

A round column stands by the big glaze slider, and in the middle of the room a painted RSJ holds a trio of tiny, subtle mood lights.

Because this room is rightly all about the views, it’s only much later that the good eye-picking art and furniture gets appreciated, with some individual art and classic designs — such as the Charles Eames lounge chair and foot stool in ply and leather — it will be familiar to fans of Frasier, if not to other design aficionados.

Surf's up?  Inchydoney is on the crest of a property demand wave

The kitchen is a low-key installation by West Cork-based maker Toby Hatchett, with birch ply tops and formica facing, with Miele and Smeg appliances, pop-up extract fan and other aids to serious cooking. Toby Hatchett also did a pull-out larder in the adjacent utility/boot room with similar-style units.

Notable are the pull-out drawers for storage instead of the more standard hinged presses, and a neat adaptation is the way the island (pic, right) can be used as a desk/worktop for sitting at a laptop while working from home, and basking in the internal and external views... both quite distracting, let HR departments be warned!

South-facing Tearmann gets light and views all day long, with the plush hotel just to the east barely registering visually as it’s mostly lower down, so the sea views are to the beaches, and the Virgin Mary Bank which divides them.

Kite surfing at Inchydoney beach, in November 2019.

Apart from the simplest family joys of buckets and spades, there’s swimming and surfing, body boarding, hang-gliding from the Marram grass dunes, shore angling, boating around the corner at Ring, kite surfing and wind-surfing, a surf school for starters out or board rentals, more pampering sea water therapies at the next door hotel as well as a bar and restaurant, and there’s even a shiny chrome caravan doing take-away coffees and hot chocolates for more blustery days. Truly, the days of burger and chip vans and Mr Whippy ices are a bit in the past.

Take the plunge at Tearmann?

A sanctuary for the future in its own right, Tearman is on a 0.6-acre site, fringed by the access road which gets busy in peak summer and sunny days, but has its own secure site, with good parking and turning on its driveway. Plus there’s extra parking fenced off outside the electric access gates on the road.

Grounds are easily kept, with enhanced planting, much of it inspired by the look and species at the Gasholders development in St Pancras, London, where the former Victorian gasometers now hold 145 high-end apartments and penthouses, in a scheme designed by Wilkinson Eyre architects.

Access to front first floor balcony

Tearmann’s architects was RIAI member Chris Ralphs: his practice Mulcahy Ralphs’ own website appears to show at least one other top-of-the-range, top-of-the-hill Inchydoney contemporary designs with a similar sweep of views to Tearmann’s, towards Muckross and Dunmore House’s own landscaped and vegetable gardens, with near year-round on the water activities, and the ever-present sights and sounds of the sea.

VERDICT: Clonakilty’s Inchydoney is coasting it right now, and Tearmann is a chance to buy at the upper end, with enviable finishes.