Four-bed home near Sheen Falls in Kenmare comes to market for €375k

It’s just a naturally glittering beauty spot, with a historically well-planned town on the meeting point where the Beara peninsula/Ring of Beara and the Ivereagh peninsula/Ring of Kerry overlap: Kenmare’s thus set up as a prime point for the next wave of Irish tourism which will see the Wild Atlantic Way thronged by native Irish in what’s certain to be the ultimate year of the Staycation.

In fact, Kenmare’s already had that ‘appreciated by the Irish’ tag, and for decades past, including especially by next-door neighbours, Corkonians almost as an outpost of their native county.

That popularity with the Irish was made manifest by the surge of building of holiday homes, most notably along and off the Sneem road during the 2000s ‘boom years.’ More discrete and compact, and also possibly more upmarket, were the handful of developments done by the Glengarriff road, the N71 and close to the international magnet that is Sheen Falls.

Generally bigger homes on low-density grounds, that profile is exemplified by the likes of Hawthorn Woods, comprising just ten substantial detached houses on large grounds, built around the early 2000s.

This is where No 9 Hawthorn Woods has just come to market, at a time when Irish buyers are particularly favouring property purchases in locations where a quality lifestyle is on the doorstep, for occasional or second home use, as well as for relocating on a more permanent basis with the option to work from home on an on-going basis.

Mature grounds

A two-storey detached house of c 2,200 sq ft, it’s on mature grounds of half an acre backing into deer-frequented woodland and has four bedrooms, three of which are en suite with one of them at ground level, and all’s in mint condition, inside and outside.

No 9 carries a €375,000 AMV via estate agent Malcolm Tyrrell of Cohalan Downing, based in Cork, and at the price level, he can expect interest from the resurgent holiday home market, as well as aspirational relocators.

It’s got a very good floor plan, with one of the four bedrooms (an en suite one) at ground level and suitable for use as a home office. Then, there’s also the main living room, kitchen/diner, guest WC, utility and access to a BBQ area on a patio with south and west aspects.

Above then are three bedrooms, two of them en suite and the main bathroom, while the BER’s a decent C2, with oil for the central heating, plus an alarm.

The accommodation is such that it’s almost in a league above the town’s more standard holiday home properties, and CDA’s agent Malcolm Tyrrell points out the recent Kenmare sales should good three-bed semis selling for close to €325,000.

Here, by comparison, this is a good-sized, detached 2,200 sq ft four-bed, and there’s little to be hand so close to the town on such a large half acre and level site, he adds.

The location is a wooded cul-de sac set just a kilometre or so from the town, which is so well served by bars, restaurants, library/arts centre and every other amenity: it’s also where well-known hotelier brothers John and Francis Brennan are adding to their local Ring of Kerry hospitality mix of the Park Hotel and river-set Dromquinna Manor, having bought the town-centre set Lansdowne Arms last year, doing an over-winter overhaul for 2021’s season.

The town is an easy and scenic walk by the town’s much-photographed suspension bridge, while Hawthorn Woods is also very close to the high-end Sheen Falls hotel and country club.

In terms of access, Kenmare is a scenic drive from Kerry’s tourism honey-pot Killarney, while over the county bounds with Cork the onward engineering march of the Macroom bypass could put Kenmare within an hour’s drive of Cork city and airport once completed.

For those who'd rather a more slow-paced and reflective approach, Kenmare's also on the N71, a  road that runs from Cork city out through coastal West Cork, before swinging up after Glengarriff to Kenmare and onto Killarney.

That makes the N71  a c 110-mile road that links so many of Munster's beauty spots and towns, like pearls on a necklace. Maybe it's time someone wrote a ballad about the N71, seeing as how the SawDoctor's decades' old N17 is back in a new iteration with singer Tolu Makay?

VERDICT: A great all-year rounder, in a holiday home location that's also much loved for year-round living, retirement and relocations.