Villa Pacelli in Ballycotton has papal blessing and heavenly views

It also comes with an acre, with scope to develop additional homes

Sat, 08 Apr, 2023 - 00:00

Catherine Shanahan

Ballycotton, East Cork
€950,000
Size	113 sq m (1216 sq ft
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	2
BER	E1

BEFORE you get carried away by the notion of sundrenched Tuscan hillsides, you should know that Villa Pacelli is much, much closer to home.

The only bit of Italy in it is the name, derived from the pope of the time, Pius XII, known to his mother as Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli.

At the time this Ballycotton home was built, in the early 1950s, Pope Pius was still holding sway in the Vatican and the woman of the house had a devotion to him. She named her home in his honour and even though the setting has none of the terraced vineyards or warm red roof tiles of an Italian hillside village, it has its own inimitable charm, with untrammelled views of sparkling Ballycotton Bay.

Arguably the woman’s choice of site was divinely inspired, payback from the Almighty for a life well led, or maybe it was sheer good luck that brought her to this private, one-acre site, high above pretty Ballycotton village, at a time when most of the homes were closer to Main Street.

The woman was Mary Egan, née Sloane, of Sloane’s Grocery and Hardware Store on Main Street (see picture from early 1900s) and she moved there with her husband, Army man, Patrick Egan, leaving the family home and store for her newly-married son, Ben, and his wife, Síle O’Brien.

Mary Egan née Sloane and husband Patrick Egan

The newly-weds ran the store for a while but subsequently shut up shop to focus on a family transport business, Egan Haulage. Transporting goods out of Ballycotton on to Midleton had started way back in the 1800s with the arrival of small coal-carrying boats into the bay.

The Sloane hardware store in the early 1900s

All of this family history is courtesy of Brian Egan, son of the late Ben and Síle, who has wonderful memories of summers spent at Villa Pacelli, and of All-Ireland weekends during the 1970s, when his parents would head off to Croke Park, to witness Cork hurlers lose more often than not, at the hands of superior Wexford or Kilkenny teams.

“As the youngest child, I would have spent a fair bit of time at Villa Pacelli when my parents were away. At the time, my grandmother’s house was one of the only houses up there, high up on Chapel Road and you could see everywhere. It was fantastic,” Brian says.

He would stay there too with his late aunt and godmother Pat (Patricia Egan, formerly of Cork City Library, author of children’s book St Patrick and the Snakes) who later moved to Cork City, as did her mother, Mary, in her later years.

The late Patricia Egan, formerly of Cork City Library, her mother Mary Egan and grandson Brian Egan

Brian’s own mother late Síle, originally from Ballyvourney, who grew up on St Francis Ave near UCC, got to know her future husband Ben through holidaying in Ballycotton. Brian says she was a great woman for the Tidy Towns while his grandmother was “great with her hands” always baking and making.

“She was widowed quite young but she was a great woman, I remember her walking up the hill from the village with her milk and bread, even into her 70s, to Villa Pacelli, the highest point in Ballycotton, it was a beautiful place,” he says.

There are far more houses now in the vicinity, albeit it’s not by any means built up. The village itself has seen significant recent investment with the return of successful tech/telecoms/energy entreprenuer, local man Pearse Flynn, who has transformed a former church into an exciting live music venue with attached restaurant and who has invested too in Cush, an up and coming restaurant near the pier. He also has novel ideas for housing in Ballycotton, geared towards the local market.

This particular house, Villa Pacelli, has a terrific setting but the property itself has seen better days. A flat-roofed ‘50s build, with a lowly E energy rating, the selling agent Miah McGrath of McCarthy and McGrath auctioneers says it would “benefit from a big renovation or a redesign”.

“With a fresh architect's eyes, you could get a whole lot more out of it,” he says.

A developer could probably knock a whole lot more too out of the one acre site. “You could put up to half a dozen homes on it, and the market is there for them,” Mr McGrath says.

“It’s unique to have an acre like that so close to the village,” the agent says.

Mr McGrath is guiding Villa Pacelli at €950,000 and says it’s “a unique opportunity with potential for further development, subject to planning permission”.

As it stands, the 113 sq m home includes a living room, dining room and kitchen downstairs and four overhead bedrooms with one ensuite.

There’s a family bathroom too. Although it’s been in the family for more than 70 years, Brian is selling now as he is based in Wexford. He feels it may appeal to someone who could buy it for their own use now, with an eye down the line to when offspring might be looking for land to build their own homes.

Mr McGrath says the village is well served for families, with a national school in Ballycotton and nearby Ballycroneen, while a school bus transports secondary school students to Midleton. There’s a good smattering of beaches in the area and a lovely cliff walk in Ballycotton itself, where the village has a nice hospitality offering, including the well known Blackbird pub.

VERDICT: Heavenly views, terrific site. Likely to attract local and overseas interest.