Endless summer living beside the sea in Brittas Bay for €1.35m

Address : 8 Cornagower Park Brittas Bay Co Wicklow Price : €1,350,000 Agent : Mullery O'Gara

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Just 100m from the shoreline of Brittas Bay’s South Beach sits 8 Cornagower Park: a bespoke, one-of-a-kind contemporary home within a private, gated enclave.

While today this contemporary fusion of indoor and outdoor living extends to 266sq m (2,866sq ft), back when its current owners purchased the place in 2020 (for €404,000 according to the Property Price Register), it measured 132sq m (1,420sq ft). So, essentially, it has doubled in size. Not only that, in terms of running the house, its new Ber is A1 – the highest possible rating on the sustainability scale – and a vast upgrade from its previous lowly rating of E1.

Number 8 Cornagower Park was originally intended to be a holiday home with its owners’ long-term view being that they would eventually retire here. But life for the family has changed, and now the couple and their four children are moving on from Ireland to warmer climes.

“We really wanted to be an eco-friendly house, and the heating hasn’t come on since we finished it. Our total running bills are less than €1,000 a year, with the biggest expense now being broadband,” says the owner. Besides it’s A1 rating, the house has its own rainwater harvesting system and its own water supply from a well, which is now purified thanks to a 250ml layer of specialised filter sand.

The brief to architect Joe Fallon was to design a home to bring the outside in. This objective has been met with outdoor dining and living areas that create a seamless divide between spaces. Every bit of this home’s half-acre site has been thoughtfully designed in collaboration with Evergreen Landscaping, from its five-a-side football pitch, its basketball half court, table tennis area, and the oversized hot tub that sits in a space where the owners like to sip a glass of something cool while stargazing.

Even the house’s entrance manages to blend its outside and inside spaces seamlessly: accessed through a break in the Venetian plastered exterior – which has been infused with copper to give metallic-hued veins – it’s more like a contemporary cloister set around a courtyard. Here, a piece of sculpture in the shape of a harp serves as a reminder of one of the family’s grandparent’s 40-year career with Guinness (Diageo).

8 Cornagower Park, Brittas Bay, Co Wicklow

The entrance

Harp sculpture in courtyard

Internally, a moody palette echoes the house’s gun-metal grey exteriors, except for a bar with working taps, which its owner describes as having more of a “chic boutique cocktail feel”. “Even though it’s only used once or twice a year, it really is our novelty factor, and our friends who come from Dublin for the weekends (under an hour’s drive away) just love it”.

The house has three reception spaces in the form of a kitchen, dining and livingroom, which run into each other.

Kitchen/dining area

Livingroom

Bar

Outdoor living area

Coupled with the outdoor spaces (which are both roofed and open to the sky) there are plenty of options for entertaining, or for chilling out after a swim – as the sea is just a 100m stroll away. The grill in the barbecue area can cook up to “40 burgers at a time” and the house really lends itself to entertaining on its half-acre site.

Barbecue area

Outdoor seating area

Outdoor dining area

Outdoor seating

With five bedrooms, the en suite principal has its own large dressingroom, office and a gym with direct access to the garden via sliding doors.

Main bedroom

Gym

Bedroom

Attention to detail is evident throughout the house. In the courtyard, backlit laser-cut panels depict birds on a tree, echoing the local nesting starlings. Speaking of trees, there’s also a tree house accessed by a little bridge, under which there’s a rubberised, gravel trampoline pit just like the ones you’d find at a playground in a public park. Even the football pitch has Fifa-approved synthetic grass.

Football pitch

Basketball court

Table Tennis area

House and grounds

The garden room, currently used as a children’s cinema has a bathroom while the guest studio comprises a bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette.

The owners have invested a lot in this house, from the high-end appliances in the kitchen, the Armani tiling in the guest suite, the antique oak-effect Millwood deck in the outside living space, the oversized, solar-powered hot tub (yes, it is staying) and the herringbone parquet flooring.

Hot tub

So is this someone’s holiday retreat or forever home? Asked about the make-up of those living in Cornagower Park, the owners say the ratio of full-time to summertime and weekend residents has shifted since the Covid-19 pandemic to about 60:40.

The beach at Brittas Bay

Number 8, a unique, contemporary A-rated home with a multitude of facilities just minutes from a sandy beach, is now on the market seeking €1.35 million through agent Mullery O’Gara.

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