Life on a blue lagoon in Ahakista for €595,000

West Cork cottage has been respected and it’s all attractively decorated, in 40 shades of blue.

Drumbeg Cottage, Ahakista, Durrus, Co Cork.

Ahakista, West Cork
€595,000
Size	245 sq m (2,625 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	C1

Forty shades of blue, not green, feature inside and outside the extensively renovated Drumbeg Cottage, near West Cork’s coastal Ahakista.

And the owners are feeling blue, too, an Irish-American family, who “are selling with heavy hearts. They are just not getting the use they’d expected out of it.”

So says Bantry-based auctioneer Denis Harrington, who is putting the upgraded Drumbeg Cottage, a labour of love, up for sale for them, some five years after they’d bought it from a retired academic, who’d lived here full-time for a period, near Ahakista pier and famed Arundel’s bar/restaurant.

Since taking on the century-old farmhouse-style home in 2021, the family reroofed, upgraded heating, plumbing, bathrooms, flooring/tiling and interiors, and renovated/reroofed an old-stone outbuilding by the entrance to the 0.66-acre grounds and did so with the input of good local tradespeople, said Mr Harrington.

He prices the finished result at €595,000 (the Price Register shows it made €390,000 back in 2021.)

Viewings have started, and early visitors have asked for second visits — always a sign of an impressive property — says the agent.

Drumbeg Cottage has lots of traditional internal features and flair, pitched and beamed ceilings, some stone floors, inglenook fireplace with stove, and feature mezzanine.

Viewings so far have mostly been by Irish people, returnees from abroad and professionals moving to work in and around Bantry, which is 15-20 minutes away by car back along the Sheeps Head peninsula.

“Ahakista is the jewel on the Sheeps Head, just as Glengarriff is on the Beara peninsula,” says Mr Harrington and Arundel’s and the pier are a short walk away, with the nexus also the Irish base of top broadcaster and author Graham Norton, who MCs the community’s annual summer festival table quiz. He has owned a stunning waterside Georgian home here for years.

Back at walk-in order Drumbeg Cottage, the departing Stateside owners have maintained the property’s slightly peculiar layout, which allows it to be run as one or as two adjoining houses, after previous owners’ alterations, with two internal staircases, and separate kitchens, with one of the four first floor bedrooms en suite and separated from the other three by its own stairs.

The aspect is southerly, with both front and rear access to the main living area, and there are vistas across the sweep of land down to Dunmanus Bay by the small Ahakista beach (the pier’s best for swimming access).

The grounds are mature and have, like the house, weathered the very wet winter extremely well, testament to the work done recently and with a lovely ‘vibe’ to the entire, says the impressed Denis Harrington: he describes Drumbeg Cottage as a “sympathetically restored residence, which can easily be divided in to two adjoining cottages, if necessary.”

VERDICT: Extensive work done, great Wild Atlantic Way location, the property’s character has been respected and it’s all attractively decorated, in 40 shades of blue.

Selling is said to be a wrench for the vendors, but the great shape the house is in now after their hard work is a boon for buyers.