Photographer Giles Norman's Kinsale family home has picture-perfect setting

Who’ll snap up the well-framed Oysterhaven home of lensman Giles Norman? It’s on the market for just under €1m

Fri, 24 May, 2024 - 12:00

Property Editor Tommy Barker reports Pictures: H-pix

Oysterhaven, Kinsale, Cork
€975,000
Size	224 sq m (2,500 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	C2

EVEN though Harvel House looks out on a panorama of sparkling seas, wide skies, all manner of boating activity and the sheer beauty of a coastal landscape, its owners don’t mind the grey days either: after all, they’ve made a living from monochrome imagery.

A Kerry scene hangs on the walls of Harvel House, Oysterhaven

Selling up their family home at south Cork’s Oysterhaven are Catherine and Giles Norman – the latter an Irish and even international household name as a seasoned photographer associated with classic black and white imagery, mostly Irish landscapes and streetscapes, selling via galleries in Dublin, Kinsale and, increasingly now, online.

His output spans over 1,000 marketable images, classics of their type and always immaculately framed.

His images feature in many thousands of Irish homes, and some overseas ones too: along with the likes of Stephen Pearce and Shanagarry pottery they’ve been a staple wedding and house-warming gift for generations, since he opened his first Giles Norman gallery back in 1988 and the next Norman invasion begun, with considerable currency, kudos and instant recognition in the name and brand.

The couple on the back end of the lens, and with an eye for capturing mood and beauty, have a move back into nearby Kinsale once more on the cards, with their family of three children now reared to adulthood: they’ve the chance to live a slightly more urban lifestyle in a townhouse by the long-established Kinsale Giles Norman gallery, after decades here by the sea.

At first glance, the 1970s era Harvel House looks quite true to its era of construction back half a century ago, when Giles’ parents came to live here on a sloping height up a narrow track road facing directly south, just above the ancient Kinure Cemetery: its tiny old church ruins go back to the 14th century, associated with Tracton Abbey, and it includes graves from famine victims to the remains of those who perished in shipwrecks in previous centuries.

Oysterhaven and another shipwreck, that of the elegant sail training ‘tall ship’ the Astrid, hit the headlines back in summer 2013 when the vessel drifted onto rocks around the mouth of the bay, but thankfully all 30 on board were succesfully rescued by the RNLI from Courtmacsherry, though the vessel had to be scrapped post-salvage.

The Astrid outside Oysterhaven in 2013. Picture Michael Prior

On happier fronts, Oysterhaven is known to generations of Corkonians and school-goers via the Oysterhaven Centre which teaches a variety of watersports and adventure activities in the safe confines of the bay, on the go since founded in 1981 by Oliver and Kate Hart when it was the home of the then-fledgling sport of windsurfing.

Children at a summer camp at the Oysterhaven Centre. Picture Dan Lienhan

Thousands of youngsters cut their teeth here in the briny waters just east of Kinsale, on any amount of craft that bobs, floats, flies or sinks, just half an hour or so out of Cork city and airport.

Visited on a sunny evening in the past week or so, the only surprise was how little activity there was on the water, and how few craft were moored in the direct views under Harvel House: it’s just a bit early in the summer yet for the usual bustle of boating and bodies at play, say seasoned salts Giles and Catherine, as familiar with the seasons’ comings and goings on the water as they are with the wildlife and birdlife from this perch.

Harvel House dates to the 1970s and was first owned by Giles Norman's parents

Selling on their behalf is estate agent Catherine McAuliffe of Savills who guides their stunningly sited 2,500 sq ft four-bed home at €975,000, with all of its best rooms up front for vista soaking out toward the Sovereign rocks, over to woodland and inlets, an ever changing panoply and panorama.

Up front and foremost is the high-ceilinged sun room off the kitchen/dining/family room, a sun-soaking spot for sure, full of light and seasonal warmth, with a green Aga in the rear-set kitchen, albeit with thru’ views to the sea.

Next to it, midships, is a very wide main living room, sharing a double aspect wood-burning stove in the dividing wall with the family room, and here there are wide sliding doors to a recently upgraded large sun terrace/patio with oversized limestone paving, wrapping around to the western gable.

Sharing the views is the main bedroom down at this end of the L-shaped family home, with wall of built-ins and walk-through dressing area to an en suite bathroom with shower. There’s a solid wood floored hall, in thin strip oak, across the back from the entry point which allows more thru’ views on immediate arrival.

Down on the other side are the main bathroom and three further bedrooms (none with views, though), with a book-lined corridor leading to a multi-use space/den/games room, in a former and now upgraded garage, and there’s also a guest WC off a side utility.

Harvel House is being sold on about an acre of tended grounds, levelling out to a large parking/turning area sheltered by the house at the top of a winding drive fringed by stone and passing a recently created boules/ Pétanque sand pit, and the back portion of the site climbs higher toward a treeline above, now thick with summer gorse in green and yellow.

Harvel House had a market outing back in 2007, then on 1.6 acres with tennis court and carrying a ‘sign of those times’ €2.5m AMV, but came as the Irish market took its own precipitous plunge.

It’s now launched on an acre and with a far more reachable guide price, sub-€1m on the asking, and at a time when Oysterhaven itself is on the crest of yet another ‘Kinsale’ ripple or halo effect on property values that has seen millions of euros paid along the wider Atlantic coastline, out to Nohoval in the east and past Sandycove to the west.

Annefield House at Ballinclashed, Oysterhaven, made c €3m via Savills last year

Savills’ Catherine McAuliffe got close to €3m for Annefield House, a pristine period gem on 5.6 acres (showing at €2.775m on the Price Register, but making more with the acreage added) a kilometre up Oysterhaven/Ballinclashet creek last summer to a US buyer who lobbed in a killer €1m bid on top of the AMV, and facing it is the stunning restored Newborough, a tall 19th century home, painstakingly restored by the Roche family of Roches Stores lineage.

Oysterhaven and Ballinclashet Creek with the Sovereign rocks in the distance

Closer to the sea, facing Harvel House is Walton Court, on the waterfront by the Oysterhaven Centre, dating to the 1770s and showing as a €2m sale in 2021, with its holiday homes behind adding further to the total sale sum there.

Also waterfront at Oysterhaven is Kinure House, a 3,700 sq ft quality bungalow just up for sale this summer with a €2.4 million AMV, facing over to the Kinsale Hotel and Spa in the woods on the western flanks of Oysterhaven bay, and which featured in these pages two weeks ago. With Harvel House now also up for the taking, it’s a case of you pay your money, and you take your choice.

VERDICT: A very good home lifted to a whole other level by its setting, and where the vendors’ own photographs on the walls jostle for visual attention with the views outside.