Take a plunge in the pool at Doolin's award-winning home for €695k

Clare's RIAI design award-winning Longhouse has many unique features including a natural swimming pool with a Wow factor in the back garden

Sat, 27 Jul, 2024 - 00:05

Trish Dromey

Doolin, Co Clare
€695,000
Size	186 sq m ( 2,002 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	B3

IT’S hard to make improvements to a house that has won an award for its architectural design but the owners of Doolin Longhouse have achieved this in spades by adding on a natural swimming pool with a Wow factor in the back garden.

A distinctive property designed with the façade and narrow slit front windows of a traditional longhouse while offering light-filled modern space on the interior, it won an award from Royal Institute Architects Ireland (RIAI) in 1995, which applauded its simple aesthetics and its modern interpretation of a traditional longhouse.

Coming back on the market 29 years later, the Longhouse has been slightly extended and tweaked by a second set of owners, who have built a 14m-long natural swimming pool at the rear. This means that the house, which has been surprising visitors with its modernity since the 1990s, is also astonishing them with its unexpected water feature.

“The pool is one of the best things we’ve ever done,” says the lady of the Longhouse, who swims in it daily and has even broken a surface layer of ice to do so in winter. Filled by 100,000 litres of water, filtered and oxygenated by plants and a low-tech pump, the pool is chemical free and, unlike conventional ones, looks as if it belongs on the landscape.

The story of Doolin Longhouse begins with its original owners, a batik artist and a jewellery designer, who asked family friend Lisdoonvarna native Shelley McNamara, of Grafton Architects, to design a home for them, specifying a need for storage and space surrounded by light.

This resulted in the creation of a long, one-room deep, two-storey traditional fronted property with four bedrooms, a huge light-filled open-plan living area with south-facing rear windows and an unusual courtyard garden with splayed walls which frame the views.

When the current owners, a leadership development consultant and a musician, came upon the longhouse in 2018, they had returned from living in New York and were looking for an Irish coastal experience. Coming to view another house in Doolin, they noticed the sale sign on this one at Ballyvoe outside the village and became curious.

“I expected it to be dark, but loved the space, the light and the feel of it,” says the owner, who immediately knew this was the house they had been looking for.

Soon after moving in, they decided to convert the integral garage into a ground-floor guest bedroom. Wanting to do this as carefully and as sympathetically as possible, they asked the original architects for assistance. By then, Grafton Architects, which had won a string of international awards, were too busy to take on the project but Shelley recommended former student Morgan Flynn for the job.

“He suggested we build out a little for better views, so we added a home office with a corner window off the living room. On a clear day, you can look out from here and see across the pool to the Cliffs of Moher and the ocean.”

Upgrades included window replacements matching the original aluminium ones, bifolding doors opening into the courtyard, new bathroom fitting and the addition of PV solar panels, which helped bring the BER up to a B3.

The emphasis was on maintaining the aesthetic appearance of the property and this is clearly in evidence in the kitchen/diner. A high-ceilinged room with skylights and huge windows, it still has its 1993 ash kitchen units.

“We replaced the worn countertops with granite and fitted new appliances but the units were perfect. We couldn’t imagine better ones,” says the owner.

Accommodation in the slightly extended property includes a huge open-plan oak floored-living/dining/kitchen area, an office with a glass wall and views, a pantry and an en suite ground-floor bedroom with patio doors opening to the courtyard.

The upper floor is accessed by a stylish ash staircase with steel handrails – a strikingly modern feature for a 1990s house. Some rearrangement has also been carried out on this level, which originally had four bedrooms.

“We knocked two rooms into one to create an en suite bedroom, turned one into a dressing room, and added a freestanding bath in the other,” reveals the owner.

Taking care not to disturb the façade, the owners kept the original sliding garage door, which now opens into a small storage space instead of a garage.

The biggest changes have taken place in the half an acre of gardens, which has a large greenhouse and a renovated courtyard and the 126 sq m swimming pool.

“After moving here, we started swimming off Doolin pier and became addicted. When we read an article about natural pools in The Irish Times two years ago, we decided that we wanted one.”

With the help of permaculturist Marc Rome, who had created the natural pool they read about, the owners built one last year.

“We hired a builder, got old carpets from dumps and recyclable rubber sheeting and enlisted 20 friends and pier swimmers to help us put down the underlay and lining.”

Next came the fitting of the pump and the planting of flag irises and water lilies and other aquatic plants. Planting wildflowers at the side, they used a Liscannor stone from the garden paths for edging and added decking, which can be used for diving.

“We broke ground on January 31 and on February 28 I took my first extremely cold plunge,” says the owner. As a garden feature put in just last year, it’s still settling and maturing. “It will be even more beautiful in future years and will look as if it’s always been there.”

Having enjoyed their seven years at their Doolin longhouse, the owners have now decided to experience city living for a while and have put their home on the market with a guide of €695,000.

Because of its location in one of Clare’s most popular tourist areas and because of its uniqueness, Thomas Maleady, of Location, Location auctioneers, expects interest from far and wide. “It’s a remarkable home for a number of reasons – including its ‘ahead of its time’ architectural design, its courtyard gardens and its natural swimming pool.”

The Doolin Longhouse is about 1.5km from Doolin village and 5km from Lisdoonvarna.

VERDICT: A winning Clare house which deserves full points for design ingenuity.