House of the Week: €975k home in glorious Glandore 

Lakeview House has a history dating to the late 1700s and was rebuilt after a fire in the mid 1800s

Lakeview House, Glandore

Glandore, West Cork
€975,000
Size	162 sq m (1,735 sq ft)
Bedrooms	3
Bathrooms	2
BER	F

Well-known names from Irish literary history, as well as more locally-grounded West Cork names in business and sport, have been associated with Glandore’s Lakeview House — a period era home without water views today: tree surgery, anyone?

Set at a townland called Aghatubrid, but in reality it’s all but within Glandore village, on just over two verdant acres with paddocks and ringed by a privacy ensuring shelter belt of mature trees. Lakeview House has a history dating to the late 1700s, as well as long periods of ownership by the related Somerville/Townsend families, and its chequered past include being rebuilt after a fire in the mid-1800s.

In 1945 Lakeview became the latter years’ home of renowned Irish author Edith Somerville, also an illustrator, musician, farmer, and master of the hunt and — in her senior years — nationalist.

Born in Corfu but reared at Drishane in Castletownshend, West Cork most famously, Edith Somerville and her cousin Violet Martin co-authored The Real Charlotte and Some Experiences of an Irish RM in the late 1890s, the latter providing the foundation for the 1980s hit TV series The Irish RM.

Deeds show Lakeview House Mk l was built for a Colonel William Limerick, later a Rev Maurice Townsend, and a Colonel Richard Townsend also lived there. By the 1830s it was owned by a Thomas Somerville as a Somerville family ‘seat’, and by the 1850s ownership moved to the Baldwin family said to be Elizabethan settlers, via years in Bandon.

By 1906, Lakeview was associated with Charles L Townsend, before Edith Somerville lived there in the 1940s: she died in 1949 in Castletownshend, and this house then transferred to a family called Browning in the mid- to later-1900s.

Taking Lakeview House into the late 20th and 21st century were John and Fran Hosford from Skibbereen, a very well-known local family as owners of Hosford’s supermarket in the town, while the late John Hosford was a founder member of the ‘modern’ Skibbereen Rugby Club in the early 1950s, along with his brother-in-law John Wolfe.

Fran and John Hosford had bought Lakeview as their family home in 1982, around the time they sold their Skibbereen supermarket, via agent Malcolm Tyrrell of Cohalan Downing. Some 40 years later, he is now back on the selling case for the couple’s three adult daughters following the passing of John Hosford in 2025, predeceased by his wife Fran (nee Dennehy.)

Guiding at €975,000, Mr Tyrrell describes Lakeview House as “an exceptional detached residence on over two acres, in an idyllic setting just moments from the picturesque harbour village of Glandore, one of West Cork’s most exclusive and sought-after coastal destinations”.

Given Glandore’s premium reputation over many, many decades and consequent high property prices, as well as the long ‘pedigree’ of owners, the actual house is on the modest side, at a 1,735 sq ft, and currently with just three high-ceilinged first floor bedrooms, two of which have just slivers of tantalising Glandore harbour views, over towards Union Hall.

The views which once might have given Lakeview its early name (lake? Hmm) are pretty much occluded by the mature trees at the lower boundary on the sloping site, many of them planted by John Hosford, who, the family say, preferred trees to the views he’d grown accustomed to.

The property has paddocks front and rear, the back rising up delightfully behind the house, beyond outbuildings/stone sheds, past the remnants of an old stone coach-house, with an arched entrance still standing, and offering thoughts of conversion possibly to a mews/guest cottage, Cohalan Downing’s Mr Tyrrell suggests.

It’s a racing certainty that whoever buys Lakeview House will take it to a far higher level post-purchase — that’s a Glandore trait, and the Price Register shows a dozen €1m-plus sales with a Glandore address, going as high as €3m-€5m for the best, with views or water frontage the key drivers.

Several sit-out areas at Lakeview have water glimpses, both front and rear and it’s on 2.12 acres, with the house and gardens on 1.12 acres, plus lower paddock with road frontage is a further acre. The family and agent opted not to offer that separately as a site, given new owners might want most options open to them, including ground for a few ponies, as the Hosfords had for a period.

Despite period roots (and one rebuild already) there appear to be few internal features of particular note, bar a staircase in pitch pine with cast iron newels and hawser-like rope as a handrail, a suitable nod to its nautical setting, with Glandore Sailing Club just a few hundred metres from Lakeview’s entrance pillars and long, greened-over approach drive.

VERDICT: Lakeview House has lovely land and location, in the sheltered lee of golden Glandore harbour, a project for those with vision, relatively deep pockets and an appreciation of its heritage. Now, to just trim a tree or two to restore that all-essential water view…