It has been launched to the market through joint agents Sherry FitzGerald Country Homes and Sherry FitzGerald Crowley in Westport, who can arrange viewings of this unique property, which is listed with an ambitious €4.8 million price tag. Its nearest airport, Knock, is about an hour and a half from the pier, which also has guest moorings should new owners wish to travel by private boat.Īs you would expect, its location has lots of secluded beaches with hiking on the peaks of Knockmore and Knockaveen and water sports and fishing aplenty during summer months. ![]() Historically, the island was home for a time to Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s legendary pirate queen whose castle, albeit in ruins, is still extant today while a 12th-century Cistercian abbey and Napoleonic tower show the importance of the island’s position over the centuries. The property also has its own helipad set on its 2.25 acres at the edge of Europe. Although County Mayo has hundreds of offshore and freshwater islands, only a handful of islands and island groups are large enough to be distinguishable on a typical map of the county, namely Achill Island, Clare Island and Inishturk, along with the island clusters of Duvillaun, Inishkea, Clew Bay and the major loughs. ![]() The island itself guards the entrance to Clew Bay and is accessible via a 20-minute ferry trip from Roonagh Pier on the mainland. Interiors have a mixture of wood and flagstone flooring against all white backdrops allowing the striking vistas and location to take centre stage. And no, it has nothing do with the film as it was given its moniker in 2011: “One day while walking towards the cottage I heard the wind whistling through the chimney pots and metal gates and it sounded like a banshee, so we gave it that name,” recalls McCann. One of these former outhouses is called the Banshee Suite. It was completely gutted and Donegal native Roie McCann originally helped source appropriate furniture for the place “driving the length and breadth of the country”, before taking on the mantle and running the place as a high-end boutique Ireland’s Blue Book guest house, which she describes as being “at the end of the road but on top of the world”.īesides the interior of the main lighthouse being refurbished – it today has three en suite bedrooms – five outhouses were also renovated and turned into further guest accommodation, which can cater for about 15 people in total. Interiors have an all-white palette to let the vistas take centre stage It took five years to renovate, not just because of its isolated location on an island off the Mayo coastline, but also because it’s a protected structure, meaning strict guidelines had to be followed.įive outhouses have been refurbished, including the Banshee Suite It later sold at auction for a sum believed to be in excess of €1 million, purportedly by a German national as a birthday present for his wife. It was last sold in 2008, when there was much chatter about its reduction, from an original asking price of €2.1 million, down to €500,000. It was subsequently purchased by the Timmerman family, who turned the property into a guest house where Jean Kennedy Smith stayed during her tenure as US ambassador to Ireland, until, in the late 1990s, it was sold to Lady Georgina Forbes, who used the spot as a private bolt-hole. Johansen, two Norwegians who had been trying to reach the North Pole were on their way back home in August 1895.Clare Island Lighthouse: The location is remarkable for storm-watchingīreathtaking views from the lantern tower This took place in Franz Josef Land which is in the Arctic about 1,300 miles further north than Ireland and much more the sort of place where you would find a walrus. Walruses are not tame as the following story shows. Permission to reproduce from article and picture - thanks to Michael Viney But in the past 10 or 15 years, the number of sightings has been growing." One was seen in the Shannon in 1897, one was shot off Co Kerry in the 1920s: two records in a century. A "rare vagrant'' - but how rare is rare. And now a walrus has spent an Easter Saturday afternoon (1999) on the shore below Croagh Patrlck, its snooze snapped in Fujicolor for the edification of science. The only ones l've ever seen close up were chivvied off an ice floe in East Greenland by a helicopter's brutal wind. Walruses belong in the Arctic, with the polar bears. But a brick-red walrus with real ivory tusks and wrinkled skin, lolling on a rock near Old Head, within a stone's throw of grazing sheep, oblivious of holiday traffic and, praise be, young Mr Paul Cotter's camera, was almost surrealistically disturbing.
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