Push the boat out: Top design and finishes at Kinsale's Watersland launching at €1.275m

Architectural design and interior finishing bring latest Kinsale development of €1m+ new homes to the highest level

Just launching: Kinsale's Watersland with four detacheds coming for sale at €1.275m via Sherry FitzGerald Brennan Busteed. Pictures: Jakub Walutek

Kinsale, Cork
€1.275m
Size	225 sq m (2,420 sq ft)-
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	4
BER	A2

The benefits of giving a good architect pretty much free rein in both the house and the interiors design brief, plus an open budget, for a niche new homes development can be seen at Kinsale’s just-launching high-end scheme, Watersland, with a showhouse done up to nth degree.

Interior open plan kitchen/dining/living, with glazed partition/wall to the hall

Behind the look and feel of the design-led and upmarket project is Bandon-based architect Una O’Sullivan, who has been designing quality homes and small schemes in wider West Cork for 30 years. It possibly also helped that she’s married to one of the co-developers, Ed Brennan, whose Brennan siblings are also in the wider business sphere in Kinsale, Innishannon and Bandon, developing as B Partnership.

Rear view of Watersland A1 type

Among the Brennans’ interests are the yacht marina at Kinsale’s Castlepark, now almost a cypher for Kinsale’s high-end appeal to salty types, superyacht owners and the super-rich.

As well as developments in Bandon, they’ve also got a residential site in the pipeline in Innishannon but, for now, it’s all eyes on Waterland, and Kinsale, where they’ve metaphorically and almost literally pushed the boat out, with an unstinting budget.

€80m superyacht Scout at Castlepark marina. Its owner has bought a c €4.5m Georgian property at Sandycove

(Speaking of pushing the boat out, the Castlepark Marina was the periodic summer berthing spot for the €80m superyacht, Scout, as its owner US billionaire James Berwin and his husband, Kevin Clark, saw through their purchase of Sprayfield House in Kinsale’s chi-chi Sandycove. 

Sprayfield on 40 acres at Sandycove, Kinsale,  appears on the Price Register at €3.8m after a swift sale, the additional land brings the total sale price to c €4.5m

The long-time home of former UCC president Gerry Wrixon on 40 acres, the Georgian gem, Sprayfield, sold for c €4.5m via Savills after a May launch as exclusively reported in the Irish Examiner in July. It now appears on the Price Register at €3.8m for the house on one acre, with the balance up to €4.5m accounted for by the waterfront acreage, paddocks and tennis court.)

Meanwhile, launching this weekend at a “more affordable” level are the first of four detached “forever family homes” in a run of six detacheds in this development, Watersland, high above the town under Barrack Hill, with a further phase/s of smaller homes set to follow.

Front reception

But, for now, it is best foot forward and, it seems, shod in the property equivalent of Christian Louboutin heels, red soles and all.

Indicative of the sort of internationally mobile buyers targeted here (along with well-heeled locals, of course) have been the teaser ads for Watersland running in the House & Home pages of the Financial Times since early in the spring of 2023 and, now, there’s proven product on the ground to step into and try for size.

The cliche 'deceptively spacious' applies in spades

At the risk of hyperbole, after a walk around architect Una O’Sullivan’s showhouse, the 16m deep, south-to-north depth floor plan in the A1 type 2,470 sq ft five-bed has to be one of the best around.

Top floor suite

It’s like some sort of alchemy how spacious it’s been crafted to feel, with internal glazing serving as dividing walls in sections (in oak frames made by Southwood Joinery), with four first floor double bedrooms, two with en suites, and not a pinched bit of space on either level.

Meanwhile, the top floor is home to a superb main bedroom suite with yet another bathroom and easily accessed eaves attic storage, masses of it, with scope for tweaking perhaps for a walk-in robes. Equally, it can be configured as a fifth bedroom or high level home office.

Simply put, it fits in great accommodation over its three levels, with the requisite open plan kitchen/dining/family room, a separate front reception room, guest WC, utility and a plant room as well. with architect Una O’Sullivan observing that “there isn’t a house we’ve been asked to design for years that doesn’t have the clients all wanting open plan family living and dining”.

No 1’s floor plans bear close scrutiny, with the showhouse viewings starting from October 1, by appointment, most likely.

Those who do come are going to have to very slightly adjust their instinctive ‘want’ reactions around the level of finish and finesse to the reality that the four now on sale at €1.275m each will need individual decisions on final finishes, needing an additional budget (c €75,000-€150,000, give or take).

Watersland under construction with builders CETTI:  the A1 type is on the left. The other five are A2 types, slightly smaller without the feature corner window. Pic Jakub Walutek

Also, the next five, the A2 type, will be very slightly smaller than the A1 show home, by just 4.5sq m or so. (One of these five homes is reserved and the show-house seen here is already taken.)

Show home kitchen by Celtic Interiors

That adjustment will see the ground floor corner window projection in the main front reception room drawn back in, the bedroom overhead not having a corner window, and the loss of a very slight bay projection in the side of the A1 type’s dining section midships.

On show

The tweaks and slight, fractional reduction in size were necessary to allot more privacy to adjoining houses, Nos 2-5, Una explains, with the “best in show”, No 1 having the benefit of a corner site at the development entrance, ringed by exceptional quality drystone style boundary walls, with the stone on the vertical, admired and then copied from a recent development the couple had seen in Clonakilty.

Joining Una O’Sullivan on the design brief at Watersland was her architects’ practice partner, Raymond Daly, with building contractors CETTI on site (Brian K did No 1), and each of the five A2-type houses is set to be completed one month at a time, and with occupancy of this run pencilled in for St Patrick’s weekend/March 2024.

The delivery crew includes Cronin Electrical, Bloommont for plumbing, DOSA Engineers, John Kelleher M&E consultants, Celtic Kitchens, Southwood for the internal glazing and feature, full-height/above standard glass doors, Munster Joinery for aluclad windows, Wychbro for the metal clad detailing and Albany/Fusion for curtains and blinds, while carpets in the show house are Ulster. The mellow brick on the facade is Capri, from Likestone Ireland, render is pre-coloured and external paving, patio and paths are natural stone.

Patio has high quality surfaces

Location is above the Cork road into Kinsale, away from the town’s throng (but, also away from the water: top floor rooms get a glimpse to the harbour mouth), near the national school and the local Lidl, and it’s across the road from the very popular Admiral’s Walk compact development of terraced three-storey homes, built in 2002 to a design by another local architect, Richard Rainey. The most recent resale there was of No 6, 18 months ago, for a recorded €560,000.

Brick, paving  and zinc set a quality tone. All pictures Jakub Walutek

Watersland is going to raise the bar far, far higher, it appears, and not just because the detached homes are considerably larger, as well as being A2 energy rated, future proofed for generations to come in homes which will be energy efficient, with concrete slab floors and underfloor heating at the lower two levels, all super-low in running costs — just as well as the starting point price-wise is €1.275m with what’s generally known as a “builder’s finish”, excluding kitchens, robes, flooring and tiling entailing further spending.

Sitting pretty

This is Kinsale, so there’s good interest expected by the developer and selling agent, Sherry Fitzgerald’s Don Brennan (no relation to the developers) and the amount of €1m+ offers and sales in and around Kinsale has been well chronicled in recent times.

Case in point? Engel & Voelkers have just launched a 88 sq m two-bed semi-d, a prized former Council property on the High Road at Ardbrack, with stunning views, at €1.35m.

Sales aweigh at Belvedere Kinsale

It’s less than a month since The Belvedere with 13 homes launched on the western side of Kinsale, with five €1.5m+ houses being offered, two sales are agreed and another done deal at €950,000 for a 195 sq m home, and most of those are three-beds, with an appeal to traders down, small families, and relocators.

Belvedere

Of possible interest to those looking at the high end of the wider Cork market, Watersland developers the Brennans have done number crunching on some current high-end schemes.

Approximate values at rival Kinsale scheme Belvedere are €543 per sq ft; about €528 per sq ft at Vailima on the Model Farm Road; the most recent resale at Ayslesbury in the city’s suburbs Ballintemple was at an equivalent of €525 per sq ft, and yet-to-launch Savills’ scheme Ecklinville, on Orchard Road, is c €528 per sq ft according to pre-launch indications.

A long lens view of water and the mouth of Kinsale harbour from Watersland, over Scilly, best seen from upper floors

Watersland comes in at €537 per sq ft but that’s with a builder’s finish, so, more realistically at €568 per sq ft, assuming a “modest” €75,000 fit-out, with features such as increased glazing, zinc finishes, site works on a sloping site and more contemporary design likely to have pushed its costs up.

VERDICT: If these considered, bright, best in class, high-end family living A-types are out of your league, a launch of B four-bed types will follow in 2024.