Sunset Coosheen Schull. Pictures: Tom Vaughan
FABULOUS sunsets are par for the course at this Coosheen Schull harbour home of substance.
The house and grounds evolved out of a former nine-hole golf course and clubhouse built by this home’s owners 35 years ago, and which was once a hub of sport, hospitality, and entertainment for the wider Schull community.
Called Sunset, the substantial property is set at a spot called Coosheen, by the mouth of Schull harbour, with pure south and westerly aspects spanning the seasonally-hopping village and harbour, many moorings (including this week’s Calves Week yacht racing fleet of some 80 boats), the Colla Rd, Long and Castle Islands, and the Fastnet rock and lighthouse, away to the west: it’s been a long labour of love for owners Donal and Linda Morgan, locals to the area all their lives and who, innovatively, developed a nine-hole golf course on this very spot back around 1990.
Who designed the parkland-style course, a par 60 or a par 30 over its nine holes, in such a scenic seaside setting, amid undulating folds in the natural landscape and with access down to a cove? Dónal says:
God designed it, I only tidied it up a bit
reflecting on the many years of engagement the couple had with players, a mix of locals, visitors, and hardy holiday-makers who came year after year, and season after season, for sport and to disport.
The clubhouse bar and restaurant was a favourite, too, a social hub run by Linda for years, while Donal was more on the outside and on-course jobs.
But, as was the case in so many other licensed premises, tightening drink-driving laws, which closed so many rural businesses, also had their impact on the clubhouse’s clientele, given its setting a few miles out from the village, skirting narrow roads on the harbour’s eastern flanks.
The course and clubhouse/bar were closed in the 2000s, and Donal and Linda pivoted to adapt the existing clubhouse into this substantial family home, Sunset.
But, now, with children reared and Donal aged in his early 70s, he says it’s time to sell up and move to a smaller property they have nearby.
With its house layout adapted by local designer Aidan Hurley — who’d been an occasional golfer here in the past, too — and with Cork County Council approval, the property grew to 3,725 sq ft, with four en-suite bedrooms, including a master suite to one side of the large entry point, with Jacuzzi on raised plinth, and also setting it a bit aside is the vast, high volume internal living area, some 14ft with supporting glulam beams and feature stone.
Sunset is one of a handful of detached houses — say about a dozen of varying styles and sizes, dotted around where the golf course had once been — and a key to its appeal, now that it is for sale, is the amount of ground retained by the Morgans, some 4.9 acres.
These provide substantial privacy, as well as the gardens that sprung up thanks to Donal’s green fingers after the golf greens went their way.
Those gardens are extolled by selling agent Colm Cleary, of Schull-based James Lyons O’Keeffe auctioneers, and he currently has some interested parties back on second viewings.
