€4m period home offers a chance to join the West Cork 'Craic Pack'

British Labour Party member of the House of Lords, Wilf Stevenson, lists his luxury West Cork Glebe House on the River Ilen

Glebe House, Aughadown, Skibbereen, Co Cork.

A British Labour Party member of the House of Lords, Wilf Stevenson, is set to sell his West Cork Ilen River-side period home, Glebe House, for close to €4m – some €1.5m more than he had paid former AIB senior executive David Duffy for it back in 2016.

The vendor’s links to West Cork have continued a long chain going back to former British prime minister James Callaghan (‘Big Jim’), who holidayed locally, to former British ambassador to the United States, Peter Jay and his wife Margaret, and to another former British prime minister Gordon Brown, who’s been a regular visitor.

Made a lifelong peer in 2010, Mr Stevenson was a senior advisor to Mr Brown, the opposition leader in Britain's House of Lords, and was a member of Labour’s think-tank, the Smith Institute.

Handily, Mr Stevenson has also been a director of the British Film Institute (BFI), as the wider Skibbereen hinterland has also been long-favoured by the likes of famed film producer and educationalist David Puttnam, a prominent British Labour Party supporter, and now Irish citizen, who also lives along Skibbereen’s Ilen river banks.

Also resident and a familiar face around Skibbereen and boating at Baltimore is actor Jeremy Irons, who owns several West Cork properties, including Kilcoe Castle.

In more recent years, the coastal line from Skibbereen towards Schull has become a destination of choice for Ireland’s home-grown ‘Craic Pack’ of award-garlanded thespians, such as Paul Mescal in Schull, Robert Sheehan near Aughadown, across the N71 from Glebe House, and Saoirse Ronan, who just this month got a planning grant to knock and replace her RoaringWater Bay holiday home near Ballydehob.

Wilf Stevenson, who is selling his Skibbereen home. Picture: Roger Harris/Wikimedia

Leaving, though, after a decade at the supremely private waterside Glebe House at Aughadown is 69-year-old Mr Stevenson, having now publicly listed his luxe and art-filled 18th century holiday West Cork home, shared with his wife Elizabeth Ann Minogue, their adult family and dogs.

An utterly private retreat from the wider world, Glebe House had been quietly on the international market at the end of 2025 on high-end mansion sales site JamesEdition at €3.95m, but has just now been publicly listed on Irish property websites for the spring selling season and via agents Lisney Sotheby’s IR, with locally-based Charles P McCarthy.

Previously, Glebe House had been home to leading Irish and UK banker David Duffy, who variously served as CEO of AIB, Clydesdale Bank and Virgin Money UK.

Mr Duffy had previously paid €3m to locally—based IT entrepreneur Leonard Donnelly for it, significantly enhanced it and added a pontoon, before putting it for sale initially with a €5m AMV, later selling to Mr Stevenson in 2016 for €2.5m.

Earlier, in the 1990s, it had been a base for a drug rehabilitation centre, Le Patriarch.

Today, the thrice upgraded and immaculate Glebe House is on nine art and sculpture-strewn acres on the Ilen river, with boat/jetty access, and has 9,000 sq ft of classical luxury across extensions and guest wing, dotted with contemporary art, spanning eight bedrooms (five in the main house, three in the guest cottage) 10 bathrooms, with four reception rooms, conservatory, tennis court, yoga room and a gym.

What, no home cinema?