Former golf clubhouse in Schull becomes stunning €2.25m West Cork property

The former golf clubhouse sits on nearly five acres, combining mature gardens, coastal privacy and panoramic Schull Harbour views

Sunset Coosheen Schull. Pictures: Tom Vaughan

Schull, West Cork
€2.25m
Size	348 sq m (3,725 sq ft)
Bedrooms	5
Bathrooms	4
BER	C1

FABULOUS sunsets are par for the course at this Coosheen Schull harbour home of substance.

The house and grounds evolved out of a former nine-hole golf course and clubhouse built by this home’s owners 35 years ago, and which was once a hub of sport, hospitality, and entertainment for the wider Schull community.

Called Sunset, the substantial property is set at a spot called Coosheen, by the mouth of Schull harbour, with pure south and westerly aspects spanning the seasonally-hopping village and harbour, many moorings (including this week’s Calves Week yacht racing fleet of some 80 boats), the Colla Rd, Long and Castle Islands, and the Fastnet rock and lighthouse, away to the west: it’s been a long labour of love for owners Donal and Linda Morgan, locals to the area all their lives and who, innovatively, developed a nine-hole golf course on this very spot back around 1990.

Who designed the parkland-style course, a par 60 or a par 30 over its nine holes, in such a scenic seaside setting, amid undulating folds in the natural landscape and with access down to a cove? Dónal says:

God designed it, I only tidied it up a bit

 reflecting on the many years of engagement the couple had with players, a mix of locals, visitors, and hardy holiday-makers who came year after year, and season after season, for sport and to disport.

Stunning grounds at Sunset

The clubhouse bar and restaurant was a favourite, too, a social hub run by Linda for years, while Donal was more on the outside and on-course jobs.

But, as was the case in so many other licensed premises, tightening drink-driving laws, which closed so many rural businesses, also had their impact on the clubhouse’s clientele, given its setting a few miles out from the village, skirting narrow roads on the harbour’s eastern flanks.

The course and clubhouse/bar were closed in the 2000s, and Donal and Linda pivoted to adapt the existing clubhouse into this substantial family home, Sunset.

Views to die for at Sunset 

But, now, with children reared and Donal aged in his early 70s, he says it’s time to sell up and move to a smaller property they have nearby.

With its house layout adapted by local designer Aidan Hurley — who’d been an occasional golfer here in the past, too — and with Cork County Council approval, the property grew to 3,725 sq ft, with four en-suite bedrooms, including a master suite to one side of the large entry point, with Jacuzzi on raised plinth, and also setting it a bit aside is the vast, high volume internal living area, some 14ft with supporting glulam beams and feature stone.

Sunset is one of a handful of detached houses — say about a dozen of varying styles and sizes, dotted around where the golf course had once been — and a key to its appeal, now that it is for sale, is the amount of ground retained by the Morgans, some 4.9 acres. 

These provide substantial privacy, as well as the gardens that sprung up thanks to Donal’s green fingers after the golf greens went their way.

Those gardens are extolled by selling agent Colm Cleary, of Schull-based James Lyons O’Keeffe auctioneers, and he currently has some interested parties back on second viewings.

Sunset launched in early summer for €2.25m, one of several high-end 2026 listings in the Schull area, including one directly across the harbour, Schull Point, on the Colla Rd, listed in June with a €1.85m AMV: It’s understood to have the wind under its ‘sale’, under good current offer.

Apart from decking and abundant patios, with pots and plants and seating spots, more substantial planting at Sunset includes an array of palms, tree ferns, olive trees, hydrangeas, azaleas, camellias, cherries, gunnera, monkey puzzle trees “and not just one or two of most of the exotic plants and palms, but multiples”, says Donal, who also provided pathways and ponds amid mature greenery, much of it from early golf course days.

A substantial polytunnel here helped bring on young plants for the considerable amount of space they were to be granted, and Mr Morgan adds that the grounds’ proximity to the sea has helped the more tender plants to survive and thrive, a sea-level feature that also helped the golf course stay open in cold winter snaps, because the greens didn’t freeze as they might on more inland courses.

There’s plenty of wilderness left, too, though, and wildlife includes foxes, badgers, and hares, as well as a variety of birdlife and sea birds, while Donal also ruefully recalls when, in a gesture of mistaken kindness for his koi in a pond that had managed to avoid preying herons for years, he drained the pond and replenished it with fresh water, only to inadvertently cause his own fish kill, as the shock of change was, he later learned, too much for the koi.

Uprooting themselves now, too, even if only to move a short distance away, the couple know they’ll miss their home, its memories of golf club days and nights in the bar, the gardens that came to replace fairways and green, but most of all they’ll miss the ever-changing views and sea vista, their proximity to water, with access retained on a portion of their land to a cove, along with the privacy of a shelter belt of seasonally changing colour and, oh, the sunsets.

VERDICT: A new dawn of ownership beckons for this Sunset house.