Heavenly headland overlooking glorious Garinish Island in €1.9m Glengarriff home

Large home on 34 acres with coves was built by Toye family who fell in love with West Cork, Bantry and Glengarriff: they even owned a castle here

Martello House is on 34 acres at  gunpoint, Glengarriff. Agent Ray O'Neill of Sherry FitzGerald O'Neill guides at €1.9m

Glengarriff, West Cork
€1.9m
Size	364 sq m (3,918 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	4
BER	B2

YOU get rock, lots and lots of land and lawns, privacy, headland coves and unobstructed views of West Cork’s golden Garinish Island, Bantry Bay and Glengarriff harbour from this mid-2000s-built one-off West Cork home, called Martello House after its views.

Views to Garinish Island and its martello tower from Martello House 

And you also get a connection to owners who fell hard for West Cork, who bought near Bantry, then bought a restaurant, bought and sold a castle, and among their many ventures built this one-off large home, and holidayed at constructive ‘leisure’ here by the lapping waters of Glengarriff, over a good number of years.

Views from inside and outside

Built large and luxe in an upside down fashion in peak Celtic Tiger times, in 2006, Martello House is actually an understated yet sizeable home, just shy of 4,000 sq ft, on 34 acres of private headland at the evocatively-titled Gunpoint Head, under the N71, in part of West Cork’s most beautiful coastal landscapes.

Land aplenty

 And it’s quite a decent chunk of the shoreline too, certain to be of interest to privacy-seeking wealthy types, perhaps those into sailing as it also comes with a large circa 2,000 sq ft modern shed/workshop/boathouse by its gated entrance, while a dock/jetty on the northern shoreline could be a handy place to berth or launch a smaller craft, and moorings have been used off the shoreline.

Headland at Gunpoint property includes coves

The property, publicly for sale late in the year via agent Ray O’Neill of Sherry FitzGerald O’Neill who has several top Glengarriff home already sales under his Sherry Fitz belt (he runs three West Cork offices), is guided at €1.95 million.

Among them was the late Maureen O’Hara’s Lugdine Park, making a recorded €1.38m back in 2015 (but making over that with its land and small islands carrying an additional value): Lugdine’s buyer lucked out in the last year, reselling it for a recorded €2.525m.

Lugdine Park

Also a top sale of late in the area was Glengarriff Castle, also showing on the Price Register back in 2020 at just shy of €2m, or circa €2.75m on its full 87 acres, bought during the pandemic by a Co Down buyer keen on an extended ‘compound’ for family as an unfinished project, and now an ongoing multi-million euro project.

Glengarriff Castle was considerable restored by the late Ted and Anna Toye while they lived at Martello House

The first burst of work on Glengarriff Castle was done almost at the same time as Martello House was being built by its UK-based owner businessman Ted and Anna Toye family in the 2000s, who’d previously fallen heavily in love with the Bantry region.

They first bought a private home with swimming pool near Seskin, Bantry, once owned by former politician and hotelier Vivien O’Callaghan. The Toyes also bought the famed O’Connors Seafood Restaurant in the town, and then got the land at Gunpoint, and secured planning for what’s here now, via Ted Daly of Daly Barry Architects Bantry and Glengarriff father and son builders Billy and Damien O’Sullivan.

Bedroom balcony

(Mind you, the late Ted Toye, who died recently aged in his early 90s, wasn’t afraid of work either, relishing hard hat times and ‘gentle’ JCB work at Glengarriff Castle while aged in his 80s, after he’d bought it for €1.6m in 2014 (the Gothic-style castle had previously been earmarked as a tourism venture by a consortium with a price tag of up to €20m.)

The Castle Woods, Glengarriff

In contrast, Martello House is a walk in the park for its next owners; fully built, well finished, with up to five bedrooms in a rock-solid build with main bedroom over a garage, and with an internal lift to the upper floor where the main living quarters, with several reception rooms, and viewing balcony are all to be found.

Interior at Martello House

The main views are over the water to the extraordinary horticultural masterpiece Garinish Island, and crowned with a Martello tower, a defensive structure dating to around 1805 and the Napoleonic wars, while the now-peaceful waters in between are frequented by dinghies, kayakers, small craft, fishing boats, ferries, smaller cruise ships, and the bay’s many resident seals.

Martello House’s owners the Toye family took the hard decision to sell up after a last summer holiday here: its selling agent, who now has long links with them, reckons their buyers could come from almost anywhere, by road, sea or air, from or off the island of Ireland, given Glengarriff’s cachet, the water frontage and quite extensive land ensuring privacy, the mild sea level setting, especially at a time of climate crisis abroad.

MV Spirit of Adventure on a visit to Glengarriff. File pic Denis Scannell

Already, SFON’s Mr O’Neill has had speedy calls from the US and Germany, and first viewings were due to start this week, storms notwithstanding, and it promises a secure holding, in foul weather, or in finer days.

VERDICT: Roll on summer 2024, when Martello House and its coves will return to bustling life, and sun-washed days.