It's a gift: Old Mill Stores has star pulling power at €595k on West Cork roadway

Actors Timothée Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan and Jeremy Irons all checked out the goods and gifts at award-winning N71 interiors store

No trouble at mill: The Old Mill Stores has been brought to a high profile and reputation by owners Tom Keane and Claire Graham. Both home and shop, it's now for sale for €595,000, and can be bought as a going concern

A LANDMARK West Cork business, mill building, and family home, with over 100 years of trading history on the busy N71 between Clonakilty and Skibbereen, is for sale: it comes with the option to take over the existing, award-winning Old Mill Stores homeware and gifts trade and where household name customers have included actors like Timothée Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan, and Jeremy Irons.

Old Mill Stores is at Connonagh, near  Leap in West Cork

Deciding to step  back   after almost 25 years in business at Connonagh, near Leap and Rosscarbery are Tom Keane and Claire Graham who say they ‘discovered’ the building in 1999 when Tom, who at the time ran Ovne Antique Stoves in a rented Dublin premises, was asked to visit Irons’ Kilcoe Castle to fit several stoves.

Scandi-thriller: Interior is an Aladdin's cave of chic Scandinavian design and craft

At the time, they had two young sons, aged two and four: Claire was a freelance journalist and radio researcher and they took the brave family lifestyle move to relocate to Connonagh, and to successfully embrace a building rescue in the process, with builder Dan Hodnett, the father of the 1999-born Munster and Irish U20s rugby star John Hodnett.

Gift-wrapped?

The couple took over the old, two-storey over basement Moloney’s Store, dating to the 1920s by Dromillihy woods, next door to a far older mill, wheel, and mill race, fed by a lake to the north and feeding into the Roury river which exits at Mill Cove near Rosscarbery.

“Back in the day, the mill and subsequently Moloneys General Grocer and Providers were a hive of daily activity. We hope we have gone some way to recreate that tradition,” observes Claire Graham after the steady and organic growth of their business since, and work done in two tranches on the old store, adding “we’d been vaguely toying with the idea of a move out of the city and to find a property with a shop space was the icing on the cake. The rest is history.”

 Buy now? Just 215 days to Christmas 2024. Claire Graham with the Christmas window at The Old Mill Stores, in 2018 Picture: Eddie O'Hare

The substantial mixed-use property is over 2,300 sq ft and includes close to 500 sq ft of retail space plus 1,800 sq ft of residential with up to four bedrooms, spread over several levels, full of character and interior elan.

The property has over 2,300 sq ft, with four bedrooms in the 1,800 sq ft living section, over several floors, plus 500 sq ft retail

It’s just listed with estate agent Maeve McCarthy of Charles P McCarthy in Skibbereen, who guides the property at €595,000, with c €150,000 quoted in addition to take on the successfully-trading business as a going concern with stock, etc, with trading figures for the last three years available.

Ms McCarthy says she expects interest from a cross-section, both as residential and as a mixed use business/retail opportunity with strong recognition and loyal support, and with a customer base that includes locals, and those with second/holiday homes in West Cork’s honeyed and moneyed hotspots.

Shear style: Sheep get shade in a field by Connonagh this week. Picture: Andy Gibson.

Among those who’ve done business are the likes of Darina Allen and family “she’s a great supporter of local businesses”, Jeremy Irons, over decades, and as mentioned Saoirse Ronan who has a coastal home in Ballydehob, and Timothée Chalamet. Others, less famous and recognisable, make the Old Mill Stores a must-visit when passing and, more recently for design and interiors afficionados, it has since been joined by RH Interiors, specialists in vintage finds, antiques and salvage, some 250-metres away at Connonagh.

Tom Keane’s specialist Ovne Stoves —which had sourced and reconditioned antique Scandinavian wood-burning stoves — more recently took a backseat to the couple’s Old Mill Stores gift and homewares side of the business (partly due to stringent new standards for solid fuel fixtures), and which trades 10 months a year in a busy spot on the N71 about an hour and a bit from Cork city and airport, as well as online.

Vote of confidence: Tom Keane and Claire Graham at the The Old Mill Stores in 2015: the old Ovne sign on the right notes they sold stoves for the Harry Potter movies

The online business was very busy during the covid years, but as its impact fades the physical shop premises side has picked up very strongly, say the couple, who source much of their exceptionally-chosen stock and goods from Scandinavia, as well as from Irish crafters.

Overseen by an architect, the first building tranche was done over an 18 months period, with significant layout changes and then a second, even bigger job was done including converting the basement into a kitchen/dining space, making a new living space, adding an extra bedroom and bathroom at garden level. The building has been reroofed and a terraced deck to the garden added.

With sons grown, the duo behind Old Mill Stores (who have a pied terre in Dublin, but also hope to maintain a West Cork home) are set for life's next  chapter: “We’re ready for a change and challenge,” says Ms Graham, who also has worked as an interiors consultant on both domestic and commercial projects as well as setting up the gift shop at Cork city’s Nano Nagle Place on Douglas Street.

DETAILS:
Chas P McCarthy, 028-21533