Scots chippie came off stint on €50m yacht to work on West Cork's €475k Healy Pass at Rock House

Adrigole's charming Rock House has a soft heart at its centre

Sat, 05 Aug, 2023 - 12:38

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports Pictures Niamh Whitty

Adrigole, Beara Peninsula
€475,000
Size	106 sqm (1,125 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	2
BER	C2

A SKILLED Scots carpenter/builder has made his way from the west coast of Scotland and the Isle of Skye to the as-pretty hills of west Cork, via a five-year sojourn honing his craft on a 280ft (81m) long €50m million classic 1930s motor yacht, fetching up at and passing through many of the globe’s sunny and hidden hotspots.

And, now Oliver Wilkinson has left his mark on Rock House, a just-refurbished traditional stone-built house on the hilly road up towards the superbly scenic Healy Pass between Cork and Kerry, giving it a sympathetic overhaul and upping its energy efficiency from an E/F to a decent C2 BER.

The fruit of his labours has just hit the summer 2023 market, with a price guide of €475,000 and the thirtysomething year old man behind its overhaul hopes to make similar renovations a business in the wider West Cork area.

He’s about to move to ‘livelier’ Ballydehob, and has a twin brother already living in Glengarrif.

He even reveals their parents, who’ve run a seafood restaurant back in Skye, also hope to make a move to Cork as well (building skills run in the family: They have another brother a plumber, working in north London).

Oliver Wilkinson (Oli) fetched up on Irish shores in the footsteps of his twin after five years on board the 1930s German-built motor yacht Talitha, owned since the 1980s by the Getty family, of global brand Getty Images fame.

All ship-shape at Rock House: note the glass-topped table Oli made using an old ship's propeller as a support

Running costs of Talitha, which has a crew of up to 17, are put at up to €5m a year, so the asking price of Munster’s very grounded Rock House are but a fraction of that, as it is guided at €475,000 by selling agent Olivia Hanafin of Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill, who heads up SFON’s new Bantry office.

Mr Wilkinson bought as a do-er only in 2022, with the Price Register showing it making €275,000. He says it dates to the 1930s, coincidentally the same year as the vessel Talitha which he ‘jumped ship’ from as a carpenter/crew, to go back to building onshore.

He sold a house he ow

Old cow shed to the side was linked to main house by a previous owner

ned back in his native Scotland to get this venture up and running, and says what he bought as his first Irish project had also been invested in by the previous owner, 20-25 years ago when the compact two-storey stone original was linked to an old cow shed to the side/rear.

Since then, it’s a three-bed home of just over 1,100 sq ft, with a ground-floor bedroom in the annex, reach via the link/utility where there’s also a shower room/utility, and was used for a period by its former owners as an Airbnb.

Work done by Oli Wilkinson includes new kitchen, new bathrooms with glazed tiles from Delfornao, new double-glazed sash and casement windows from Munster Joinery, reinsulation with 50mm backed Kingspan boards, new plumbing, electrics, and upgraded oil-fired central heating and radiators.

Healy Pass, overlooking Glanmore Lake on the Cork-Kerry Border. Picture; David Creedon / Anzenberger

There’s new herringbone-style timber flooring in the main living room, and a wood-burning stove by an exposed stone hearth on a side gable, with stone also left exposed externally over much of the walls, with painted and rendered sections up by the gables: the roof ridge has been repointed too.

Inside now, the main section is largely open-plan with a living room, central stairs and kitchen/dining room with new units, and the green glazed tiles behind the stove are also sourced from Cork city’s Delforno.

Overhead, are two double bedrooms, with high, traditional sloping or ‘coombed’ ceilings with tongue and groove boards.

SFON’s Ms Hanafin says that Rock House “has been carefully crafted into a modern and comfortable home set on 1.2 acres approximately of natural terrain gardens,” and it’s within a short distance of Adrigole Bridge on the southern side of the Beara peninsula with “an exceptional setting, nestled under the hill overlooking Adrigole Harbour and the varied country views.”

The 1.2 acres is largely to the front, with the exposed rock of the Cahas to the back, with a quiet access road serving a small handful of other homes (sheds nearby are in separate ownership) off the Healy Pass Road (pic, right) which winds, serpentine-like, to a height of over 300 metres towards Lauragh and Glanmore Lake over the border with Kerry.

Adrigole pier. File picture Denis Scannell

Rock House has a side patio garden getting sea/harbour views and the Adrigole location is 15/20-minute drive to the fishing port of Castletownbere, and to the village of Glengarriff and Garnish Island, with numerous Beara Way walking trails along the Wild Atlantic Way and numerous historical and archaeological sites.

VERDICT: Redone by a pro. The fact this is a walk-in, just-renovated home will have a wide appeal to many afraid of taking on a build project themselves and of the hidden costs involved.