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Irish Examiner
5 days ago
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Myrtleville's €1.4m contemporary home Stella Maris is stellar indeed
ARCHITECT-designed to visually conceal its size and scale, and also to make it look like it might have been an older dwelling which grew over time, Stella Maris is, as the name suggests, a star property by the sea. Vista beyond The contemporary build, in a 'broken plan' in two linked sections, is up on a height above Myrtleville, just outside the mouth of Cork harbour, with a sweep of panoramic views of land, sea, and of mushrooming homes in the cleft running down to the beach between Pine Lodge and the former Bunny's at Myrtleville, and also straight out to sea. It was built in 2008 by a couple with a young family, coming back to Cork from a decade of living in the UK, lured by the appeal of a life by the sea, with all-essential ocean vista, yet near schools and services. It's quite likely the next occupants of Stella Maris ('Star of the Sea') will be similar: They'll prize the setting, the views, the proximity to beaches, the many access points from inside to outdoors, the contemporary design, and the standard of finish. The only question is will they come from the UK, from elsewhere overseas, from up country, Cork City, or be traders up from Crosshaven? All will be revealed in the coming weeks, as Stella Maris arrives for sale and for summer 2025 viewings. Stella Maris is listed with a €1.4m AMV, with agents Stuart O'Grady and Ann O'Mahony, of Sherry FitzGerald, who describe the layout as a bit unconventional, but dictated by the site and the chance to grasp the most of the elevated coastal vistas beyond. It's one of a handful of homes in the wider Crosshaven district launched at €1m+, coming on the back of a real rise in values and prices paid for better stock out this neck of the wood, with those all-important water vistas. Back three years ago, Sherry FitzGerald got €1.275m for a contemporary home near here, called Nirvana. Now, they have good early interest in a recent, substantial Crosshaven bungalow listing, called Winfield, guiding at €1.3m (it featured here within the last month) and have just gone 'sale agreed' on a former rectory-style, 1,700 sq ft period home at Fennell's Bay, called Fairview, for €836,000, or above its €730,000 AMV or guide price. Today's Stella Maris replaces an older, previous dormer dwelling on this plot, demolished to make way for this for more substantial family home, with design by architect Peter Stacey, of RORSA. At the time, that RORSA practice was updating Cork County Council's Rural Design Guide, and hence had an idea on just how to get a home of scale in what otherwise might be seen as a prominent, elevated spot. The key was reducing the bulk by breaking up the building mass in to sections, in this case a two-storey, rear-bedroom wing with gable facing the road, linking via the central connecting hall to the wedge-shaped and angular family television room to a large, day-use main living, dining, and family room and kitchen, under a tall, monopitch roof, just recently redone in standing seam zinc. First floor terrace/balcony by main bedroom suite That (costly) zinc roof, unusually, can be appreciated from a height, as a roof terrace has been created on the mid-ship link section (pic, above), accessed from the first floor's main en-suite bedroom, and from a first-floor office/option further bedroom. Main bedroom's private en suite The principal bedroom is luxurious, with large private bathroom with double shower, plus deep bath for soaks by an internal window divide to the bedroom (with Venetian slatted blinds), and has water and shipping views when standing up, while a bespoke timber storage unit at the end of the bed conceals a pop-up television screen. Main bedroom There's a lovely sense of 'remove' to these upstairs rooms, almost luxurious and apartment-like in feel (an external staircase could make it almost self-contained). The balcony/terrace is a prime lookout spot, over the sloping roof line above Myrtleville's myriad and scattered house forms down to the sea and to Bunny's above the western shoreline (soon to revert to private-house use, after decades in the hospitality sector.) Stand up, and you see all, sit down, and you are a lot more sheltered from the wind. In the two-storey rear section are three bedrooms, one of them en suite, and all have glazed door access to the front garden/patio, and all have a water view/glimpse. There's also patio access from the mid-section family/television room, via a large sliding door in a largely-glazed end wall, with a further large slider in the ground-floor lounge/home office/gym/play room off the kitchen at the eastern end of this c 60' long front section. Family living area has patio access This front kitchen/dining/living wing has the best of the views from inside, with an extensively glazed front façade, with slider in the step-down family section at the western end. There's a pair of sliders in the more fully glazed dining mid-section, and a tall, fixed window just on the entry point to the multi-use end room. The kitchen, unsurprisingly, is high-end, with a bank of ovens and integrated coffee maker in pale or baby blue-faced units, topped with dark granite, from long-established French company Schmidt, who had strong Munster sales in the 2000s, with a hub in a peninsula/breakfast bar/room divide section. Flooring is pale or light oak, in wide plank boards and other internal joinery, is oak also, keeping an overall low-key aesthetic, allowing art and feature lighting to shine. The main family living space moves the feel of this already airy space from double aspect to triple aspect, down three steps from the dining/kitchen, with green plant screen 'baluster' divide, and with a large wood-burning stove in the gable, and has sliding patio door access to a sandstone patio. There are several sit-out/patio options, for different times of the day and sun tracking/wind shunning. Sherry FitzGerald's Ann O'Mahony and Stuart O'Grady say their downsizing vendor's family home has been very well-maintained, since construction in 2008, and is bright, has views from just about every room, lots of storage and bedroom/day room options, with an abundance of space, on 0.4-acre site, within a walk of the beach at Myrtleville and close to services, shops, and schools at Crosshaven, within a commute of Cork and airport. VERDICT: The €1.4m price tag puts Stella Maris in a quite rarified price league (are there more €1m+ priced homes in the wider Cork market this year that ever before?), but as combined package is going to see competitive bidding to land it for the next, fortunate owners.
Irish Examiner
08-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Examiner
Why would anyone sell ocean scanning Whistler? Well, family here has Cork's famed Bunny's in its sights...
IT WOULD take a lot to get a family to leave the likes of Whistler, a contemporary upside down home with wide ocean and beach views, in a property hot-spot like Cork's Fountainstown — but, turns out the vendors have something special up their sleeve, known and loved by them for half a century. Whistler is a house with studio apartment at the back within a stone's skip of the beach Selling Whistler are the O'Brien family, who built it back 25 years ago and home since to a couple and two boys. Only moving up the road, the family has deep local roots — they own both Pine Lodge (now The Lodge) and famed Bunnyconnellan's hospitality ventures, in nearby Myrtleville just to the east along the Coast Road…one of Crosshaven's increasingly valued Golden Miles. Whistler's vendors are to move to fantastically-sited Bunnyconnellan's after taking it off the market Whistler hits the market with a €1.3 million price guide via agent Roy Dennehy, for a high-end and adaptable four-bed, 2,150 sq ft home, including a self-contained apartment to the rear, plus double garage, at the Fountainstown beach end of the Coast Road. Why are the O'Brien clan selling? Well, great and all as Whistler and its seaside setting and vista is, they have a bigger, even more exotic fish to fry, at the famed Bunnyconnellan cliffs-set site less than a mile away, set to be their new home. Set in one of coastal Cork's most iconic settings, overlooking the mouth of Cork harbour and Roches Point above Myrtleville beach, Bunnyconnellan, or Bunny's, has been in generations of the O'Brien family's hands for nigh on 50 years; now it's about to take another pivot in that property's long, 200 year history. Go Whistler Bunny's was bought in 1976 by Paddy and Sheila O'Brien, who had previous bars in Cork city (the Marina) and in London, and they further developed the former bar/small hotel owned by the Porteous family, making it their own family home for a period too. Hugely loved by Corkonians and visitor alike, for its position as well as tradition, Bunny's closed post-pandemic when the current generation of O'Briens had at peak employed 80 between here and The Lodge (eight chefs alone in Bunny's), citing staffing and accommodation difficulties at the time. The Lodge trades well still today, whilst the c 6,000 sq ft Bunny's on over five acres was put for sale in 2023, guiding €1.9 million. It featured extensively here at the time, gaining both commercial venture offers and residential traction and interest, both as a dramatic one-off private home, or split into several smaller residential sections. Ground floor bedroom at Whistler Turns out, the O'Briens picked up on one aspect of the sales pitch (from agents at the time Savills, who had strong inquiries on it) and subsequently decided to restore it as an extended family home, splitting into three sections, for themselves and their adult children, noting their sons — in their 20s — would have the same challenges as any other young person in buying homes for themselves. Whistler is an upside down home, for the views They have the design services of an architect friend, Klaus Fleisch from Stuttgart and who has local coastal links too to the area, to adapt the former Bunny's, which grew from an initial tiny cottage back in the 1820s, in fits and starts, to what it famously became. Conversion back to residential use won't need planning permission thanks to legislative changes brought in a few years back to facilitate the repurposing of former pubs and bar to living quarters. While there will be some public disappointment that a bar won't run here in such a dramatic setting again 'I think people will be glad it won't be over-developed' says one of the couple, accepting the quip that generations now will be living cheek-by-jowl, in something akin to the famous Kennedy Compound on Cap Cod…also coincidentally three houses, on c six acres. In contrast, Whistler is a one-off, in more ways than one, 'a must-see, a truly rare opportunity indeed to purchase a substantial, detached residence located in one of South Cork's most sought after coastal settings, in a private cul de sac' say Dennehy Property. Open plan upstairs Whistler had three bedrooms (one en suite) and main bathroom at ground floor, and first floor reception hall, and vast open plan kitchen/living/dining with extensive apex glazing (with electric blackout blinds if needed). There's then access to a balcony for views over Fountainstown, Ringabella bay, Ringabella beach, headlands and across to Cork's outer harbour where yachts sport and tankers berth off-shore, in an ever changing ocean panorama. Behind, meanwhile on the stepped site is a self-contained one-bed studio apartment. The Price Register show half a dozen or so €1m+ sales at nearby Crosshaven, where several on the Point Road were bought for this sort of sum, flattened and rebuilt for new, multi-million euro homes with bells and whistles. The effect and price premiums put on water views and proximity has spilled over the harbour community's backing hills to Fennells Bay, Myrtleville and Fountainstown and the Coast Road between the latter two beach locations with another raft of €1m+ sales, including the €1.79m paid for the new build called Medjez-El-Bab. VERDICT: Canada's Whisler is a well-known snowboarding and ski-resort, at Cork's Whistler you can water-ski, surf, kayak and sea swim to your heart's content, then walk back up home for a hot shower and apres ski afterwards.
