Wild Atlantic views at €785k Nohoval home in Cork 

PEOPLE will remember the covid period for any number of reasons, good, bad, and life-changing for many.

It certainly was for Damien and Chloe Kingston who, as a young couple, had just finished a house build after returning to their native Cork and to Damien’s family homestead by the sea, after a carefree four years overseas in New Zealand.

Their own Irish covid period came with finishing the house and then, the arrival of twins, a double blessing which they’ve happily embraced, with run around siblings Nathan and Paige now three years of age, and the best of buds.

Since then, they’ve been parenting, working, and studying, and finessing the family home which they’ve just now decided to sell, to move just a bit closer to Chloe’s own family in Carrigaline.

They reckon they’d like a do-er up, are physically fit and able, engaged and skilled and “we really enjoyed building our home.”

Their home comes for sale this week with estate agent Michael Pigott, who lives locally at Nohoval and who knows the couple, twins Nathan and Paige, and wider Kingston family too: he guides at €795,000.

Damien’s a self-employed plaster by profession and so knows the build trades well, while Chloe’s a legal executive who just graduated with a law degree this week, and who has just returned to the wider workforce after three years working from home/full-on child nurturing.

The duo started their build project in 2018, on family owned land just a few fields away from the coastline at south Cork’s Nohoval, by a “secret” beach, in a super-quiet setting yet not remote, sharing the cul-de-sac with a handful of other neighbours.

They had an idea of what they wanted in design terms, admitting to being devotees of house TV shows — from Grand Designs to DIY SOS.

And even though Damien had grown up in this seaside setting and could be blase about views, they both wanted their home to make the what’s on the doorstep.

They drafted in the services of Kinsale-base architect Steve McClew (whose work has appeared here previously, including a circular, timber clad house up by St Luke’s Cross) and worked with him.

He pitched the house for those views and laid it out so that its relative size is concealed when first approached up along the drive.

The scenery grabber is the mezzanine/living room up over the kitchen/diner, looking out over a double height space and a gable wall of glass to the Atlantic and is, Chloe says, her favourite spot in the completed home.

Their build elsewhere is low slung, a cross between traditional bungalow (almost) and something more contemporary (it went though planning without a bother).

With integrated garage (with overhead storage), and splayed floor plan, and a layout that’s good for family life, as well as for entertaining, it has a nice split between day and night rooms too, so they can entertain family and have barbecues and parties without waking babies and bairns.

Using family, friends, and work colleagues, both were hands-on with physical graft, and among the crew were architect Steve McClew, carpenter Darragh Quinlan, Christopher Scully, and stone mason Dave Hill, who came from East Cork and worked with the Kilkenny limestone they had sourced for facades/cladding to match the windowsill and wall cappings.

The stone came from O’Connell Stone in Killumney, and apart from making much of the overall look of the one-off, it was also used quite extensively in a well-sheltered, walled outdoor BBQ area with open fire, all faced in rough, dark limestone.

Since the house was finished nearly five years ago, one of the last jobs to do was to render the block walls, now done in a dark acrylic render with a dark grey colour. It is a guaranteed 25-year job, just needing a power-wash every year or two to keep looking crisp and fresh, while the stone also means external low exterior maintenance.

Work was started in 2018 and it finished up by St Patrick’s Day 2019, all having gone smoothly.

The house was built on an acre, with the old ditch boundaries of a two-acre field that had been grazed by ponies, and a simple fence erected on the boundary/spilt.

The horses still look back at this recent interloper house, in this quality farmland area, good grazing and tillage land.

The setting is half way between Nohoval and Minane Bridge, down one of the myriad of cul-de-sac roads petering out by cliff edges, farm yards, and domesticated clusters — such as is the case here — with access to a lovely, little-known beach/cove via paths between fields.

Nohoval cove is to the west and Rocky Bay is to the east, with mix of sand and shingle between rocky fingers into the sea.

A star-shaped house near here, a few fields away and about 3,200 sq ft, came for sale in early summer 2022 with a €995,000 AMV.

It went sale agreed well over that, before hitting a sales hitch and having to relaunch, asking excess €1m. A sale is now due to close in coming weeks at over €1.2m

On an even higher plane, both physically up the hill and price-wise, was the 2022 sale of a large homestead on extensive landscaped grounds (about six acres) at Reagrove, Minane Bridge.

It showed at €1.9m on the Price Register, a record for the area, and part of a sale of 22-acres all-in likely to have topped €2.2m, in which auctioneer Michael Pigott was a joint agent.

That 2022 top sale near Minane Bridge was remarkable in exerting a sort of “outer Kinsale” gravitational pull for buyers (it’s coastal and near the airport too).

Back on the Kinsale side of Nohoval, yet another very strong result was the price paid for Annefield House near Ballinclashet, Oysterhaven, showing at €2.775m on the Price Register.

On its fuller acreage it’s likely the pristine, period Annefield House made closer to €3m, bought by an overseas purchaser.

That’s the elite end of the scale in this wide and affluent farm hinterland, though, and the likely buyers for this €785,000 Killowen Nohoval modern, walk-in order home are going to be families/relocaters looking to trade up, and perhaps who can work remotely some or all of the week, to cut down on commutes, while the local national school Scoil Naomh Fionan is a short hop away by car.

This property, heated by oil with radiators, gets a B1 BER, has solar panels, and a new owner can perhaps link up an EV charger to the PV panels on one of the several roof profiles for free running costs many months of the year.

Accommodation-wise, two of its four bedrooms have en suite bathrooms and walk-in robes/dressing rooms, and the main family bathroom also has a stand-alone bath.

There’s a guest WC, pantry, and utility room, and occupants have the optional use of a room with a corner window as a living room/fourth bedroom, while the attached garage is multi-purpose too, great for unloading kids and shoping in the dry, and may be annexed/integrated in some future time for more domestic uses.

VERDICT: This south Cork coastal stretch has been steadily climbing in appreciation (and values) post-covid, and for clearly evident reasons.