All's shipshape at €550k West Cork's Shiplake nature reserve

Get your nesting instincts honed at well-feathered Shiplake Mountain Farmhouse cluster

Business or pleasure? Part of the homestead cluster at Shiplake Mountain Farmhouse where owners can earn income from rentals

Dunmanway, West Cork
€550,000
Size	252 sq m (2,700 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	3
BER	C2

LIVING with Mother Earth is second nature at a spot like Shiplake Mountain Farmhouse, a West Cork sanctuary and nesting spot for wildlife, birdlife, native trees, and human inhabitants alike.

Nesting instinct: artist Jackie Nevin created this nest at her Shiplake studio for this year's Cork Midsummer Festival (see below)

If fact, it is all so in tune with itself that Mildred, the 11-year-old terrier dog who also calls this place home, has befriended one of the local foxes and “I can hear them barking down in the garden,” says co-owner Jackie Nevin of her adopted home outside West Cork’s Dunmanway.

She warmly describes this extensive home place out here as the nicest place she’s ever been, and near the friendliest, most genuine community too, she says.

An artist and former psychotherapist, Jackie has travelled with world with her partner whom she met in Co Clare 30 years ago and now, in their 60’s are both ready to downsize from their comfortable and rustic base, in perfect-pitch tune with its natural surroundings.

They’ve variously lived and worked in Clare, Waterford, Limerick, and Bristol, and have travelled the globe, settling down again at Shiplake, which they bought about 17 years ago when it had traded as a hostel and was “one of Ireland’s oldest hostels, at the time.”

They worked on the main house, the guest cottage, the farmhouse and the studio, plus the land especially over the years, with one of them “gifted with plants” putting in whips and saplings and growing many hundreds of native trees and other plants.

As a result, there’s abundant, and appreciative wildlife now, including red squirrel, deer, hares and yes, a particularly friendly fox.

“Mildred and the Fox? Yes, it sounds like a BBC wildlife programme,” Jackie agrees.

Donning her former psychotherapist hat, she says this special place reinforces the ‘biophilic response’ - where humans crave an affinity with nature.

They seem to have proven it too, with warm and thoughtful five-star reviews on various guest websites when they let part of the complex, of home and guest cottage to holiday makers, and get lots of family repeat visits.

“We had a family here last week with three boys, and next week there’s a family with three girls coming back. It’s lovely to see them grow up and to play with our own grandchildren,” says Jackie.

Looking to downsize a bit now, the owners have put Shiplake Mountain Retreat for sale with agent Colm Cleary of West Cork Property, and he guides all in at €550,000.

First viewings have just started, and several parties are coming back for second viewings and to walk the land at a bit more leisure.

There’s scope to live across the complex just as a couple or as a family, or to income from rentals as the owners have done successfully, with five bedrooms in all, plus a wooden chalet (the grounds have an old gypsy barrel-top caravan too).

Mr Cleary says the house(s) are in pristine order, with solar panels, gas heating, stoves, extra windows put in, plus UV filters for pure water from the property’s deep-bore well.

The agent says the couple have been perfectionists in their work to the house, working sympathetically and sustainably, while imbuing it with loads of character. “There’s a complete sense of being transported from the noise and stress of the modern world to a serene oasis, all just a 10-minute drive from Dunmanway town,” he adds.

Home is where the heart is

VERDICT: Entirely indicative, artist Jackie Nevin has a work in this month’s Cork Midsummer Festival, called ‘ Abhaile,’ (or Home) in which she’ll have a mobile installation she made, a super-sized blackbird’s nest with eggs, about 4’ wide, which will be moved through the streets of the city centre, before being placed on a float and left go on its onward journey, out to sea.

And, it all started to hatch here, at Shiplake Mountain Farmhouse.