Get your front row seats for coastal Cork's two €1.65m cliffhangers

Two cracking €1.65m new builds to be built in Myrtleville's Manion's Field by company aiming for high-end coastal home niche

Myrtleville, Cork Harbour
€1.65m X 2 houses
Size	255 sq m (2,750 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	A1 (target)

FRONT row seats overlooking the entrance to Cork harbour, Roches Point and the wide Atlantic are the promise this weekend in our House(s) of the Week slot — but they won’t be ready to move into until the 2025 Six Nations Cup, or when Twickenham hosts the final of the women’s Rugby World Cup next year.

Jaw-dropping views to mouth of Cork harbour and Roches Point. Named  Aille, and Imeall, meaning 'Cliff' and 'Edge', the two A1-rated homes will be set  some 50 metres back from the cliff at Manion's Field Myrtleville. Trevor O'Sullivan of Lisney Sotheby's international Realty says if in Kinsale they'd be twice the price

So, make a swift and well-heeled grab now for this domestic duo, a pair of high-end, cliffhanging and cliff-top high set contemporary-designed A1 BER-rated homes, a calling card for a newly-formed construction company aiming to forge a reputation for coastal builds and brave design.

Concrete builds on both levels, with part-stone facade and extensive glazing for the Atlantic views

Behind Authentic Homes is the long-established and straight-talking home builder Tom Murray and family: in previous partnerships such as Murrayforde and Citidwell he was involved in city schemes such as Citadella at Bulls Lane on the Blackrock Road by Ashton and Botanika in Ballintemple.

Section of what will be built

Now, along with a company wing doing retrofits, and already acquiring sites and plannings for new houses and apartments in the city, Mr Murray has eyed up several exceptional coastal sites between Cork harbour and the Old Head of Kinsale.

This one, Manion’s Field at Myrtleville outside Crosshaven and with unobstructed ‘front row’ ocean views just beside Myrtleville and Fennells Bay is an example of one direction Authentic Homes is keen to go: seaward.

Before/now: Manion's Field at present: the pair of A1-rated upside down homes had a clean planning run

“I was down looking at another site in Myrtleville and saw this, and fell in love with it,” says Mr Murray of the 0.8 of an acre ‘Manion’s Field’ he acquired from a family estate, part of a handful of divers Myrtleville properties being sold by estate agent Trevor O’Sullivan of Lisney Sotheby’s International Realty.

After: completion can be by next year

He paid €350,000 for the 0.8 acre site, dramatically right out to a cliff edge with a sharp fall-off, and has been assured by engineers that the houses’ location on it, 50 metres back, is erosion-proof for generations to come.

A former 'Ford box' home in Graball Bay in 2017 prior to upgrades

Manion’s Field previously held seven tiny chalets or cottages, long since removed, redolent of the day of the old ‘Ford Boxes,’ the buzzy ‘tiny homes’ of their day from the 1930s, fashioned out of durable wooden crates for car parts at Cork’s Marina Ford manufacturing and assembly plant.

No longer in at the 'chalet' end?

 That’s a far cry from what looks set to replace them, after a pre-planning meeting with neighbours and a smooth, unobstructed run through the planning process with Cork County Council.

The near-identical detached homes each on c 0.4 of an acre and part-dug into a southerly aspected sloping site were detailed by BRH Design Partnership, with an ‘upside down’ layout, with four bedrooms at the lower level, two with en suite bathrooms and one end one with a dressing room.

Houses include outdoor kitchens/big covered BBQ areas

Above is an open plan living/dining/kitchen, about 10 metres long and 5.5 m deep, plus family/TV room, entrance hall with stairs and guest WC. Construction will be in concrete, with extensive glazing, part-stone facade, flat fibreglass roofs, and each room will have access to sit-out/viewing terraces.

Front row seats

“The views are something else, it’s just an amazing site,” says Lisney SIR auctioneer Trevor O’Sullivan, now offering both houses here individually at €1.65m with what he says are generous PC sums for kitchens and other finishes (images are CGIs).

“There’s real demand for high-end coastal homes; these will be superb, and extremely well finished out with A1 BERs,” he says, adding “if they were in Kinsale they’d be €3m or more each.”

A new price precedent has indeed been set in Kinsale with €5.5m paid just before Christmas for a Scilly ‘white glass box’ home, bought by a US based purchaser who also last year acquired a small period home estate, Sprayfield near Sandycove, for €4.5m.

Nirvana, Myrtleville sold in 2022 for €1.25m

Closer to Myrtleville, an upside down home called Nirvana, several fields back from the water by Fennels Bay sold in 2022 for €1.275m.

Around Crosshaven several €1m plus transactions have taken place along the Point and Camden Roads, while at Fountainstown Sea La Vie (a more traditional, high quality dormer build) made €1.2m in 2023, and MedJez, a new build on a big water’s edge site on the Coast Road between Fountainstown and Myrtleville made €1.793m in 2022.

View across Myrtleville towards Manion's Field from above Bunnyconnellan's former bar and restaurant, itself also now for sale for €1.9 million

The ‘big beast’ in the locality, meanwhile, remains Bunnyconnellan’s, or Bunny’s.

The former legendary bar/restaurant Bunny’s above Poulgorm at Myrtleville, launched last summer at €1.9m on a 3.5 acre ‘brownfield site via Savills.

Med Jez on the Coast Road between Myrtleville and Fountainstown sold for €1.793m

It has been getting more attention as a unique residential site than being taken over as a commercial entity, and looks right back over at this duo in the wings, across the water.

VERDICT: Developer Tommy Murray and agent Trevor O’Sullivan don’t shy away from the cliff-top setting: “it’s the big selling point,” they say. Being built to A1/passive standards,the houses are tentatively named as gaeilge, as Aille and Imeall, meaning ‘Cliff’ and ’Edge”.