€345k West Cork musicians' retreat is so private 'it's perfect for the witness protection programme'
Have I the right key? Simon Harris in 2016
It's one that has been visited, stayed in, and enjoyed by some of Ireland's musical glitterati....only its owners are too respectful of their privacy to name them.
If the walls of the hideaway artists retreat-like house could talk, they'd sing, chant, burst in to choruses and chords and give it a bit of old fashioned, raucous rock-and-roll welly.
'We don't do conventional,' says Ali, one of two serious musician owners of this West Cork charmer, replete now with instruments, rock-and-roll memorabilia and photographs, as well as hens, geese, and a braying donkey.
The couple themselves, Stuart and Ali Crampton, are more Greystones than Bray, with multi-instrument playing Stuart having retired from music teaching after 23 years in Wicklow's Greystones, where, among his pupils, there was one 14-year-old Simon Harris, to whom he taught piano; he also wrote the music for a short play that the future Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader had written.
Farm home and barn dances at Seehanes, Drimoleague
Stuart has performed with a vast array of musicians, from the late Rick Danko, a founder of The Band, to Ronnie Wood, Cork's Cathal Dunne, Colm Wilkinson, and Mary Black's long-time guitar accompanist Pat Crowley: however, high-profile guests who've stayed here remain unnamed.
'We joke this is the perfect house for the witness protection programme, it's so private. There's a kilometre of lane up to it, which the council just redid at a considerable cost and we had to contribute to, but the result is utter privacy; you don't hear another sound here,' says Ali, who grew up working on film sets and rubbing shoulders with movie stars ( her dad had a film catering company).
Purple reigns
Having fallen for the West Cork lifestyle and now well-embedded in the local music scene, they are on the move to a similar type of traditional house, only nearer the sea. They are selling here at Seehanes, near Drimoleague, and sort of in an equidistant triangle of reach to Clonakilty, Skibbereen, and Bantry.
Niamh Moloney, of Sherry FitzGerald O'Neill, is handling the sale (SFON also handled the sale to the Cramptons for US-based previous owners two years ago), and she guides the characterful, three-bedroomed, traditional-style home of over 1,000 sq ft at €345,000.
It has good living space in the effectively one-room wide main build, with a rear kitchen, utility and bathroom behind, and above three bedrooms, plus boxroom/home office, with a bathroom off the rear one.
Kitchen cabinet
Only lightly modernised, with wall-to-wall rock and music images and craftily upcycled furniture finds and still with heaps of retained character and original 'feel,' it has had windows replaced, has oil central heating, and a large wood-burning stove in a wide inglenook fireplace and gets a D1 BER.
It has an enclosed garden/music jamming room, several sheds and useful outbuildings, plus traditional, curved steel barn, and is on almost 2.5 acres with a paddock to the rear.
Jammy
VERDICT: 'A grand-daughter of a previous owner contacted the agents after the photos went online to say the house had always been a happy one and had never looked so good,' says Ali.
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