Perfectly anchored coastal living at €1.35m Sandycove home

Properties in this very pretty part of Kinsale are hard enough to come by

The Anchors, Ardkilly, Sandycove

Kinsale, Cork
€1.35m
Size	213 sq m (2,300 sq ft)
Bedrooms	4
Bathrooms	3
BER	Pending

IT‘S anchors aweigh at this Kinsale area home, called The Anchors, built in the 1980s when Sandycove was still peripheral to the tourism hot-spot town and when the ‘new’ bridge over the River Bandon was still in its infancy.

The Anchors

The 1977-opened Archdeacon Duggan bridge shortened the trip round to Castlepark and to Sandycove, when it opened downriver of the old, narrow, and unstable Western bridge back in 1977: The Anchors followed not long after, in 1982, built as a one-off at Ardkilly, Sandycove, by the well-regarded, long-time trading Kinsale firm, Joe Neville & Sons.

In the decades since, it has been followed by only a few dozen Sandycove homes, such is the scarcity of planning in the sensitive, high-amenity locale, and comes for sale hot on the heels, this August, of a €1.95m listing, called Seaglass, right on the slipway facing Sandycove Island, which made Page 1 here last Saturday.

Seaglass is also on the market, with a guide price of €1.95m

The Anchors is priced at €1.35m by estate agent Johnny O’Flynn, of Sherry FitzGerald, for long-term owners. It is a 2,300 sq ft/213 sq m dormer, traditional in form, well-built on elevated, sloping 0.25 acre grounds, facing east towards the bulk of Castlepark headland above a narrow estuary as it rounds it way towards the shingle Sandycove beach and slip, much loved by swimmers, year round.

The Anchors 

There’s a gentle, maritime, decorative interior theme to The Anchors, while the name is further justified in the grounds by the entrance, with an anchor mounted on a limestone plinth bearing the property’s name, carved singularly as ‘The Anchor,’ rather than how it is billed today, with the plural ‘Anchors’ preferred.

The Anchor as it was originally billed

Mr O’Flynn describes the overall package as exceptional, and that’s possibly as much because of the rarity of sale offers in and around Sandycove.

Because of its aspect and orientation, The Anchors has only oblique views of Sandycove’s island from its grounds, with sunsets from an adjacent patio to the south, off the main living room: The grounds include a detached double garage, and The Anchors shares a private access road with just a handful of other detached homes with similar east-west aspects. There is a substantial farm/equestrian facility higher up this quiet road.

Internally, The Anchors has a living area linked to a dining room via double doors, with arched access to a kitchen with fitted cherrywood units.

 There are three ground-floor double bedrooms, one of which is en suite with walk-in wardrobes, while a five-piece main bathroom suite serves the two other, lower-level bedrooms.

The oak-floored hall has open-tread stairs to a first-floor bedroom, beside a shower room, with a further, multi-purpose space also at this level, configured as a dressing room, but equally suited to use as a home office, study, or hobby room.

Externally, once past electric gates and an approach drive fronted in cut limestone with the signature anchor, The Anchors has pathways around the house’s perimeter, with a rose-planted rockery above, while the garage has space for cars, boats and more.

VERDICT: There’s good privacy and further potential with this detached, Sandycove one-off.