Escape frenetic life to a large four-bedroom lighthouse keeper’s home, with compelling views, where you can watch the sun set on Western Europe and have private access to a swimming cove.
The house just beyond the bend in the road doesn’t look like much as you take the corner. It’s a Victorian six-bay rendered house with additions.
Once you drive into the property, you get to appreciate the location a little better. It’s now sheltered from the prevailing winds by hedging.
There’s a viewing deck and a sundial adjoining the property that records it as the location of the final sunset of the last millennium in Western Europe.
Address: Dursey shore lighthouse residence, Garnish, Beara, Co. Cork, P75 E954
Asking price: €1.15 million
Agent: Sherry FitzGerald
What you don’t initially see is the craggy rock where steps, a pier and a slipway have been cut into the rockface to take you down from the water.
This was the point of departure for lighthouse keepers, where they would take to the sea to make the crossing to Dursey lighthouse, on an island known as Calf Rock, off Dursey Island.
Before you go inside, take a dip in the water. It’s unlikely you’ll bump into any other humans as access is completely private.
You could swim in the nip here unseen.
Currently set up as two residences, the properties had direct views of Calf Rock.
Built in conjunction with the lighthouse by Henry Grissell of the Regents Canal Iron, the dwellings served as homes for the lighthouse keepers and their families until 1940.
They were eventually sold off by the Commissioner of Irish Light in 1946.
The beacon is long gone.
First lit in 1866, a violent storm in the winter of 1881 completely severed the lighthouse, something master builder Grissell had predicted would happen.
No souls were lost, but the keepers spent 12 days on the rock before conditions abated and they were brought ashore.
It would be the 1990s before they would eventually be converted to a dwelling.
Set on two acres of land, the home, which has an E2 BER rating, extends to 381 square metres and is currently laid out in two separate living areas that can easily be adapted into one spacious home.
Most of the rooms benefit from compelling views.
The main house comprises four bedrooms and two bathrooms, and has a broken-plan living room cum kitchen with a Victorian-style conservatory framing the views on the days when the rain comes in.
The second residence has a broken plan kitchen cum living space with the living area open to the floor above, where there is a second sitting room.
It too has a conservatory.
Technically, under building regulations, it is a one-bedroom, three-bathroom house, as there are two attic rooms with painted exposed beams that look like you’re in the hull of a boat.
Expect kids to want to install themselves up here.
Along with direct access to the foreshore, there is a former storehouse, seen in the lead image, that is ideal for storing kayaks or small craft.
The West Cork location is on the Wild Atlantic Way and a 15-minute walk to the nearby cable car to Dursey Island, while Allihies village is a 12-kilometre drive, and the port town of Castletownbere is about 22 kilometres away.
