€975k West Cork property a nest for free spirits to ‘fly back’ home

Vendors of Timoleague house lived in 34 other far-flung and exotic settings, but this spoke of home to them

Beatrick, Maryboropugh, Timoleague

Timoleague, West Cork
€975,000
Size	394 sq m (4,225 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	4
BER	D1

Marie Norton’s mother told her that “no matter how wild the bird it returns to the nest.” And Marie, born in Innishannon, did return to her native Cork, having moved home 34 times, across a few dozen countries, in a peripatetic, 57-year marriage to Cheshire-born Fred.

Their West Cork family home since 2002 is testament to their life together in places as diverse as North Africa, Malta, the Middle and Far East, Singapore and Holland, but Indonesia is clearly their favourite: There they spent the longest time, learning the language and filling this home with a fascinating trove of memories and souvenirs, craft and art and evocative photography.

The couple first met in Tripoli, in North Africa, where Fred — who’d studied engineering in Salford — worked in the oil business in the decade after vast oil discoveries made Libya a major player in the markets, and Marie (nee Loane) was a nurse.

“Colonel Gaddafi made us postpone our wedding,” they laugh, in reference to their desert nuptials, and the 1969 Libyan Revolution that put the ‘coup’ in ‘couple.’

Not all their upheavals were as stirring, but world travels and volcanoes and a decade in a desert are part of Norton family lore.

Their three children have been reared, after years boarding at Bandon Grammar School.

Oh, and they also had a deer farm north of Bandon for while. As you do.

Fred and Marie bought this stunningly-sited house on a hill back in 2000 as their Irish base. They moved into it full-time in 2012, for a later life chapter of putting down roots at last, and it does, indeed, tell their story as it comes up for sale.

Set at a townland Maryborough, two kms from Timoleague on the prosaically-titled R600, their one-off, upside down home, called Beatrick (it’s derived from a portion of their names) is a 4,200sq ft house with 1970s bungalow roots, on a 1.5-acre garden that they’ve uplifted to a verdant oasis that’s largely organic.

It comes with a fruit garden and cages to keep away pesky birds, has a vegetable garden and a polytunnel, an extravagant, secure hen run and hen house (ask them to tell you why one hen was named Lady Bandon!) and a wide array of trees, exotics mixed with natives, green fingers and a sturdy work ethic all in evidence: A spreading fig tree yields many hundreds of figs each year, too, adds Marie proudly of this vaguely exotic plant.

There’s also a viewing perch/timber bench known to grandchildren as the ‘Storytelling Seat’, which they’ll always remember, as well as a mature spreading tree called The Library, as that’s where the youngsters climbed to read.

The Nortons are trading down, now, and the house needs another family to embrace it and use it and appreciate it,so it’s listed with estate agent Ernest Forde, of Hodnett Forde, for €975,000.

That price is partly due to the scale and mix, sunny aspect and disposition of this property, and because this scenic stretch of the Wild Atlantic Way, between Clonakilty and Kinsale, right by the Argideen/Courtmacsherry bay estuary, has carried a price premium over the past decade... even more so since covid.

The road towards Timoleague, and back out toward Kilbrittain, has some top-class architectural designs.

One of the very first ‘outsiders’ to fully appreciate it was a previous owner of this very house, Kinsale solicitor Andrew Dillon, who’d windsurf on the bay on higher tides out to Courtmacsherry, and go back then to his home, where he had installed a sauna in the main family bathroom. Again, that was a bit ahead of the curve, presciently anticipating today’s much in vogue ‘sauna and sea’ healthy lifestyle obsessions.

Andrew Dillon has lived here back over 30 years ago, and was responsible for ‘growing’ the size of the original bungalow, adding the vast sunroom off the equally large ‘great room’, with its vaulted ceilings and darker demeanour directly inside; it’s a home of many contrasts, and adaptable.

It must be one of the very few houses along this water-aspected stretch (south-facing,) with clear views from inside the expansive home to the east to Courtmacsherry village, and west to include the medieval Franciscan friary at Timopleague. The friary/abbey is visible from the kitchen’s picture-perfect window, from the shower in an upper-floor bathrooms through the clear glass (such privacy, no need for frosted glass) and from a family/sitting room on the rear western gable. The Nortons altered the stone-fronted porch entrance of Beatrick, adding a boot room for practicality’s sake, and they have the best bedroom of the whole house upstairs, some 20’ by 13’, with nice high ceiling and complete with an en suite and dressing room.

Oh, plus views to stir the heart on waking each morning, to see what the weather and tides promise for the days ahead.

Stairs lead down from the 35’ by 17’ living room, which gets heat gratis of the equally proportion-sized sun room (with roof blinds for extra-hot weeks like this), with draw-back windows for ventilation and with large, raised decking beckoning day and night on the level beneath. Below is a contrast, for sure, cooler because there’s less solar gain and it’s home to a large library, an adjacent office with deck/rerrace access and distracting views, three bedrooms (one’s en suite with external access, while another on the far side has compromised head height) plus a utility. Overall condition is excellent and the unusual layout could suit buyers or families at many life stages, after clever interventions by a short succession of owners (a UK family were here for just two years, between the Dillons and Nortons, selling to the Nortons as they wanted to return to family). Who’s going to be the house’s next life chapter? Might someone alter the ground/lower floor and further improve its usefulness? Add Velux windows into the roof of the great room? Put a tennis court in the large, 1.5-acre grounds at the lower level by the road, where there’s a gate for water access just a hop, skip and jump away over the scene-stealing R600?

VERDICT: Cork Airport is 40 minutes away. Indonesia, by comparison, is a 20-hour flight and 14,000km further on from this great, nest to return home to from foreign shores.