Glass walkway turned €495k Roches Point home into a beacon of light

Irish Examiner

a day ago

AT one point in the notable communications history of Roches Point, military personnel stood atop the strategically located headland and waved their arms like madmen to send messages to approaching ships. It was before the advent of radio and the arm-waving was quite purposeful.
They were spelling out letters of the alphabet via a signaling system known as semaphore, at a time when communications' systems were still quite crude.
Arms are a theme at Roches Point. A coat of arms sits above the door of the middle home on one of two landmark rows of houses that lead up to the iconic, 200-year-old lighthouse.
The lighthouse at Roches Point
It's part of the heraldry of the Roche family, landed gentry of Norman-Irish lineage, who were once significant landowners in the area around Roche's Point. They were ennobled as the Barons Fermoy of Trabolgan, from whom the late princess of Wales, Lady Diana Spencer's maternal grandfather was descended. The Fermoys' stately home was demolished in the 1980s to make way for Trabolgan holiday park.
Still standing after more than 200 years are Coastguard Cottages and Lighthouse Terrace, with the latter bearing the Roche family coats of arms above the mid-terrace home.
Several properties on Lighthouse Terrace were owned in the 20th century by Michael Roche, descendant of the original family of landowners after whom Roche's Point is named. He was known for his sailing and fishing prowess, despite having just one arm.
Rebecca McNeil (nee McGrath), the vendor of No 4, Lighthouse Terrace, the house featured here, says the story he put about was that it had been shot off by the Black and Tans in the 1920s. She has a vague recollection of him showing her father a newspaper clipping about the incident, but isn't entirely sure.
Michael Roche died in 1992 and two brothers, the father and uncle of the vendor, bought the end-of-terrace home, which had been a post office and telegraph station in the 1800s. They spilt it in two, so that it's now Nos 4 and 4A Lighthouse Terrace.
No 4 Lighthouse Terrace
Rebecca's dad had a long attachment to Roche's Point, having holidayed there in his youth. It's where he met his future wife, Claire McGrath, whose mother, Eileen, had rented Mr Roche's house as a holiday home in the 1950s.
Born on Clare Island, Eileen was from a lighthouse-keeping family and lived in lighthouse properties all around the Irish coast during her youth.
Eileen married a Cork school teacher (Mattie McGrath) and settled in Douglas in Cork City. Her brother, Jim Hegarty, was the principal keeper at Roches Point, and he arranged for the McGraths to rent the old post office from Michael Roche in the early 1950s.
'As Mattie was a teacher, they would spend the entire summer holidays there with their six kids during the '50s and early '60s, and Eileen would continue to spend summers there after Mattie passed away and the children grew up,' their granddaughter, Rebecca, says.
The house was 'an absolute wreck' when her father and uncle bought it, but they did enough work to turn the divided property into two perfectly adequate holiday homes.
'My parents had emigrated to London in the '70s and when I was growing up, I loved coming here for the summer. It was so carefree; we'd be gone all day, fishing from the rocks, lighting bonfires on the beach,' Rebecca says.
In the late noughties, when her parents were looking at retirement, they undertook major renovations at No 4, aka Dun Rossin, transforming the rough-and-ready holiday home in to a sophisticated coastal bolthole.
'They got an architect to come up with ideas and a local builder to do the renovations and it took about a year and a half,' says Rebecca.
Bay windows were installed to give a wide-angled view of the harbour.
The layout was changed (a kitchen and courtyard switched positions).
Kitchen overlooks a courtyard
A new kitchen was fitted.
Central heating was installed, a head-to toe makeover was carried out, and the pièce de résistance — a glass walkway — was installed upstairs.
'People walking along the terrace probably think the houses are quite dark, but at No 4, the glass walkway makes a huge difference,' Rebecca says.
The interior is impressively crisp now, a bright, light-filled property with amazing harbour views from the bay windows. Light comes in from an internal courtyard, too, accessed from both the kitchen and the living room.
Two of four upstairs bedrooms come with en suites.
There's a downstairs guest loo and a utility.
Outdoors is also smartly presented. The garden, across the narrow road, is tiered and includes paved patio close to the road, and, at a lower level, a large deck area with ringside seats to passing cruise liners as they glide through the nearby mouth of the harbour en route to dock in Cobh.
The lower deck at Lighthouse Terrace
Cobh, Camden Fort, and Carlisle Fort are all visible from Roches Point.
In 1928, the residents of Lighthouse Terrace were witness to the sinking of the White Star Line's RMS Celtic, after it was grounded on the rocks at Roches Point.
Every home on the terrace has salvage from the stricken liner, including No 4. You can see the salvaged porthole inside the front door.
Adrianna Hegarty, of Hegarty Properties, is selling No 4 and she's expecting strong interest from holiday-home seekers and retirees, including from the UK.
She describes the terrace as 'an exclusive coastal setting, steeped in maritime legacy, nestled beside the iconic Roche's Point Lighthouse, and just a short distance from the village of Whitegate'.
Picture: David Creedon
'Whether you are drawn by the heritage, the setting or the serenity, this is one of the rarest properties to come to market on the East Cork coast,' the agent says.
Her price for the well-insulated (B3 BER), 1400 sq ft home is €495,000.
VERDICT: A terrific coastal bolthole that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.