US billionaire James Berwind boats in for €4.5m Kinsale house buy
Superyacht Scout berthed at The Dock, Castlepark, Kinsale in June 2023 . The 210' €80m vessel is owned by James Berwind
A US billionaire James Berwind who berthed his €80 million superyacht Scout in Kinsale harbour last month has been linked locally to the €4.5m+ swoop on a Georgian waterfront property, Sprayfield, near the Munster property hotspot, and which has just disappeared off property websites after getting a May launch.
A number of local sources have linked the ‘sale agreed’ of Sprayfield – owned by former UCC president Gerry Wrixon and his wife Marcia - to James Berwind who’s a fifth generation heir to a family fortune made in coal mining in the US in the 1880s, with the Berwind family now primarily involved in investment management, and real estate.
Described as an environmental architect and animal-rights activist, Florida-based James Berwind’s personal wealth is put at over €500 million, while the Berwind Corporation’s property assets are put at up to €3 billion.
One of the corporation's ‘natural resources’ divisions controls 400 million tonnes of coal and natural gas in the US as well as timber resources in the Appalachian mountains.
Following on the sale of James Berwind’s lake-fronting Palm Beach home - reported in 2021 to have made $26 million – Mr Berwind has spent the past several years primarily living on board his private yacht Scout with his partner Kevin Clark and their dogs.
The yacht, which arrived into Kinsale at the start of June, was bought in 2020 for €80 million, can carry ten guests in ocean-crossing luxury with 14 crew and is called after one of their dogs Scout, and the pair are involved in a number of environmental and animal rights movements.
Running costs for the Dutch-built 210’, $80m craft Scout are said to be in the region of $8 million a year., and it has a helipad on the foredeck, two 26' tenders, and 'puppy park' for the onboard pooches.
Scout was one of two superyachts to arrive in Kinsale this summer, the other, bigger vessel being the $300m, 360’ Kaos, owned by Walmart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie.
In comparison to those boat values – and indeed, personal and Walton and Berwind family fortunes - the €4.75 million price tag put on Kinsale’s gem-set Georgian home Sprayfield is almost literally a drop in the ocean.
The period home, with woodland, half an acre of shore frontage, paddocks, stables, tennis court and wine cellar came for sale via Savills Cork in early May, with the vendors’ identity undisclosed.
The selling agents have declined to comment on reports of the swift ‘sale agreed’ on the period property sale by Kinsale’s Sandycove Island in the acknowledged Irish property hotspot where recent top records have been in the €4m to €5.5m price bracket and where a modern house Cove Cottage, has just come for sale this month with a €3.25m AMV.
Cove Cottage is close to Charles Fort in Summercove, near where the $300m yacht Kaos anchored last month.
Savills’ sale listing for Sprayfield House says “it is no longer available,” and it has been removed from other websites also, having been exclusively previewed in the Irish Examiner’s Property & Home on May 6.
Attempts to reach Mr Berwind via the Berwind Corporation have so far been unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, Sandycove’s Sprayfield House has been the private home of former UCC president Gerry Wrixon and his US-born wife Marcia for over 20 years, after they moved to the shoreline near Kinsale from Farran.
Mr Wrixon resigned as UCC president in 2006, after a sometimes controversial tenure and despite having gained approval to continue beyond his 65th birthday. He was widely seen as ‘pro-business,’ having set up the National Microelectronic Research Centre (now Tyndall Institute) at UCC in 1982.
Now aged in his 80s, Prof Wrixon has maintained a number of business interests, including in renewable energy and his Kinsale home the 230-year old 3,350 sq ft Sprayfield was an early Irish adapter of solar panels for energy generating.
In 2019 Prof Wrixon was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in the microelectronics industry by the Microelectronics Industry Design Association (MIDAS), foreshadowing, perhaps, a Midas touch in his private property dealings also….
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