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Bougie Schull Point is a €1.85m waterside looker that could set a new price record

Substantial architect-designed house has a premium setting on the elite Colla Road

Fri, 29 May, 2026 - 19:06

Tommy Barker Pictures H-pix

Schull, West Cork
€1.85m
Size	277 sq m (2,990 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	4
BER	G

SCHULL’S Fastnet Film Festival is just wrapped up a week, and hey, hot on its coat tails comes this Summer’s West Cork blockbuster, right on location too.

Set in a scene-stealing cocoon at the mouth of the property hot-spot’s harbour is Schull Point, a very rare, architect-designed substantial 1960s private home, for sale for only the second time ever, in its long and location-blessed life.

The combination of starry attributes is going to make it very much a prized property in a premium setting, on a bend on the elite Colla Road, barely overlooked from anywhere with nary another house in sight bar on proximate islands such as Castle Island, Long Island with its Copper Point lighthouse, and Horse Island, sold in peak covid times, 2020, for €5.5m.

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Schull Point comes with almost 3,000 sq ft of space, on 1.7acres, with 200m of shoreline, which includes a pier/yacht berthing spot, handily sheltered from the west.

If Schull and Colla Road locals are tired of having the strip described as ‘millionaires’ row’, well, they are just going to have to live with it for another good while given the bidding buoyancy expected for this waterfront one-off; it comes to market this June bank holiday weekend with a €1.85m AMV.

It’s just been listed with joint agents Michael O’Donovan of Savills Cork, and Philip Hosford of H Property for a Cork legal family, for whom it has been a holiday base for 30 years or so.

Now vendors, they had bought it from a family, understood to have been from Germany, who had it designed and built in the ‘modernist’ style in the 1960s by architect John Heffernan who maximised the site’s spectacular attributes with what likely was a daring design of the day, complete with two first floor balconies: One, with a hot tub, is accessed off the main bedroom, the other’s a very large first floor outdoor roof terrace, slate-paved and stoutly railed, above the property’s main living area, ideal for sun downer cocktail times and, ideally, high life gaiety.

Now itself aged in its 60s, internally, it has architectural design features that are solidly back in vogue once more in the 2020, such as cubist shapes, flat roofs with several domed roof-lights over the stairwell and landing, and extensive glazing, with many double aspect rooms to boot.

Solid? “It’s bomb-proof,” exclaims Philip Hosford of the build, likely to be mass concrete with an enormous ‘heft’ to it. That may or may not be a good thing for its next well-heeled owners if they want to make internal or more substantial changes to this ’60s timepiece, as is very possible.

It’s in good overall shape, but clearly is dated in its décor and finishes and the BER is an unedifying G, so it will need more spending once secured; it’s likely the buyer will have comfortably deep pockets, as has been the pattern locally of late.

The grounds are glorious, and quite exotic, fully screened from public view (bar, from passing boats rounding the headland back into the harbour) and dropping below a leafy bend on the Colla Road before the pier and ferry to the islands, graced by old pines, palm trees, and tall echiums; pathways scythe through the greenery, while walkways by the shoreline are delineated by a thick rope and rail posts.

Below the grounds is a bathing cove and a deeper cove to berth a boat

The grounds have several sit-out and view spaces: one path leads to a bathing cove, while the bigger, deeper cove is home to two robust concrete piers and galvanised steps, well able to berth a fairly substantial boat.

These are set at the end of a rocky projection, giving the best views back to the five bed (two en suite) house itself, pretty low slung and with its relative bulk broken into cubist sections, with an integrated garage part of the package, with further upgrade possibilities.

It’s a racing certainty that whatever deck-shoe, well-heeled new owner rocks up here can also tie up here, whether it’s kayaks or stand-up paddle boards, dinghies, cruisers, motor yachts or Ribs — Schull buzzes with Ribs in high season, swarming around Carbery’s 100 Isles like wasps, seeking out secret beaches, or heading out to the Fastnet, around Cape Clear, or out to Sherkin for a pint (Sherkin’s local pub the Jolly Roger, is up for sale too, for €475k — just a thought.)

Near to Schull Point, another mid-1900s house, Cuan Bán with water access and private jetty (previously home to the late businessman Bernie Cahill) sold in 2019 for a recorded €2.1m to a Cork city businessman Chris Dineen, and has had €1m-plus upgrades since.

Also showing on the Price Register at €2.1m is Fastnet House, one of Colla Road’s oldest houses of note, on the inland side of the strip, and that too is getting very extensive renovation, said locally to have been picked up by a buyer from the US.

There’s only a small handful of homes with water access among the highly prized and highly priced properties on the Colla Road, notes Savills Michael O’Donovan, describing Schull Point as both spectacular and unique.

(Very different is a May 2026 listing across Schull harbour, the 3,600 sq ft four-bed, high end home called Sunset, on 4.9acres of former golf course land at Coosheen, priced at €2.35m by agents James Lyons O’Keeffe, and likely to feature in these pages later this month.)

Ingenuity can be the order of the day too for such one-offs by gilded Schull, where money’s little or no object, such as that shown by US financier/hedge fund founder of Egerton Capital and arts benefactor William Bollinger and his wife Judith some 500m away on the village side.

The Bollingers had bought here over 20 years ago on the inland side, but later got permission in the mid-2000s for a very substantial boathouse on land they’d bought across the road, with records at the time showing they envisaged an underpass on the road to link both properties.

The main house, called Red Oaks, is likely to be one of West Cork’s most lavish properties, like a transplanted Falcon Crest for its expanse, complete with tennis court, acres of landscaped grounds, several buildings and four or five imposing stone entrances onto the Colla Road... next stop, ‘Billionaires’ Row’?