IS Fisherman’s Cottage the most magical, romantic cottage cluster along the Irish shoreline — or even further afield? Probably. And, the €1.5m asking price and swift reaction to its sale and instant viewings sort of indicates it is a top contender, irrespective of cost. “It doesn’t go with logic of a normal market, it’s not a normal property and people are falling in love with it,” says auctioneer Con O’Neill – who uses the word “authentic” to best describe it. But should it/they not more properly be called Fishermen’s Cottages, plural?
After all, there are two of these immaculate, comfortable and dry-stone homes, almost cheek by jowl, in a glade-like seaside setting where once, a century and more ago, there were a handful… the others have largely disappeared. There used to be up to six tiny stone botháns here in a deep, wooded valley cleft, Simon’s Cove, just east of Clonakilty and Inchydoney, supporting up to 80 people fishing the headlands for herring. The cove was even a base for up to 60 small fishing boats well over a century ago, despite the rocks and reef that guard the scenic cove in a hilly and hideaway fold in this verdant section of West Cork landscape and seascape.
Not for nothing is the local name Rocksavage — ships and fishing boats are strewn under the sea around these parts and the underwater hazards spring to life at lower tides, while another section is home to flat beds of stone and daring ‘jumping rocks’ for intrepid bathers. Brought back from beyond wreck and ruin — as once abandoned, roofless heaps of stone and rubble three decades ago — by patient stone-upon-stone labour and with a keen aesthetic and a love indeed of authenticity, Fisherman’s Cottage has been a steady evolution of home and gardens where it seems time is reversed. Instead of decay, it’s been growth, and green grooming, and the shepherding-in of beauty.
Despite the sheer proximity to the Atlantic, within the proverbial beach stone’s throw, there’s shelter here now on the part of the two-acre holding where these almost end-to-end homes, one dating to the 1700s, the other marginally later, and 19th century most likely, hunker down into the land, low, and squat, yet surprisingly are open and airy inside thanks to roof lights.
Increasingly hidden from public view at the rarely busy Simon’s Cove, as a canopy of oleander, sycamore and elder band together for mutual support and screening 100m from the sea, this rare and rescued property has secreted about it bowers, an orchard with apple and pear trees, veg and flower beds, strimmed wilderness, a stream at a boundary and stepping stone pathways with assertive stalks of teasel and foxgloves in bi-annual season.
Oh, and it has a cliff pathway, while much of the cove is privately owned from the high water mark upwards but in common public usage (with a narrow path back to Ballinglanna) with a small slipway, and little caves under the headland too for added mystical charm. There are also viewing eyries and simple stone patios set out of the wind, creating their own shelter-belt by dint of perseverance and persistence in planting, all tied together with cobble-stone paths, ringed in low retaining walls, and then with more prominent sit-out areas in locations more exposed to the elements.
“The sea here is awesome,” says long-time owner Beatrice Streuli. The Swiss native grew up in England, then lived in California and came to Ireland some 35 years ago with a fledgling family, first buying and working on the early 1880s Butlerstown House near Seven Heads and Barryroe, later owning Stand House by Clonakilty’s Granagoleen and, inter alia, taking on the salvation of these utterly charming cottages, now a far step up from the days of humble fish families and hard, hard lives ever on the brink of danger from the Atlantic.
Along the way, three sons got reared, one still living locally, and exceptional freedoms came with this setting, from swimming and diving to kayaking with basking sharks – up to 40 of those jaw-dropping whoppers lolled and fed for days in the waters in full view of the kitchen windows here as recently as last month. To say the work done on the cottages, paths and gardens was a labour of love is almost to understate it. There was some heroism, despite being on a small scale, in the commitment to the ‘feel’ in the quarrying and salvage of materials and in their reassembly, to what’s
