Garnish Island, Martello Tower, waterfrontage - a fairytale setting for €650,000 Glengarriff home

LOOKING more like a picture from a kids’ book of fairy tales than a house sale brochure, the preternaturally pretty scene this home sits in appears more imagined than real.

It’s as authentic as it gets though and it certainly dazzled the Cusacks when they bought about 40 years ago.

A pair of doctors, born and raised in Limerick, before moving to the UK after the Second World War, they regularly returned to Ireland on visits to relatives in their home county and in Kerry.

As they approached retirement age, they set about looking for their own Irish property and estate agent Bernard Harrington showed them the house in Glengarriff.

They bought in 1980, dividing their time between it and their UK home in Weybridge, Surrey, where they had both practised as GPs.

“I think they decided on Glengarriff, because frankly, it was much closer to the airport than Derrynane or Caherciveen, where we had relations,” says their son Barry Cusack.

Barry’s dad Michael hailed from Ballinacurra, while his mother Norma moved into Limerick city after her parents died, where she lived with her uncle, Canon O’Dwyer. Michael’s uncle was the well known fishmonger, René Cusack,who founded the long-standing family business in 1916.

Barry says his late parents got tremendous enjoyment out of their Glengarriff home, and he and his two siblings, Kevin and Shelagh, came back and forth on visits.

“We’d comet during the summer and bring the grandkids and they loved it.

“You had the sunrises up over the mountains and the bay spreading out before you and we’d do boating and fishing with the little ones all summer.

“I often went there myself during the winter, during turf fire weather, because I’m a great one for turf fires.

“I know it all sounds very clichéd, but that’s exactly what it was like.

“The whole setting, our house by the water, looking over at Garnish Island and the Martello Tower and the seals and the rocks — it was glorious,” he says.

Barry has his own grandchildren now and they too experienced the joys of Glengarriff.

“One always likes having all the family together in a shared place and that was part of it, everyone piling into the house and going fishing and boating.” Now however the next generation has its own priorities and interests he says, and it’s no longer feasible to hold onto Glengarriff. And so as the wheel comes full circle, they’ve returned to the local estate agent, which this time around is Denis Harrington, son of the late Bernard. He is handling the sale at Bocarnagh, Glengarriff, guiding the 915 sq ft house at €650,000 He says it’s in a unique setting, surrounded by nature, inside Glengarriff Harbour, with its own water frontage and the sound of the Atlantic “constant and powerful”.

The house, he says, “is a modest bungalow with vast potential”.

“There are few spots more beautiful and I’ve no doubt the house will be developed further in the future,” he adds.

As it stands, it’s a three-bed in beautifully landscaped gardens, with a south-facing kitchen and a living room overlooking the seashore, 20m away.

VERDICT: A one-off opportunity in a very special setting.