HOLLYWOOD director John Huston’s former house, St Clerans in Craughwell, Co Galway, later a five-star hotel owned by US chat show host Merv Griffin, has finally sold, after nearly 10 years on the market. An Irishman with business interests in the US has bought it as a family home.
Agent Coldwell Banker was tightlipped about how much it went for – when it took over the sale from another agent in 2009, it dropped the price a fraction from €4m to €3.7m. It’s unlikely to have made that in this market, but perhaps the sprinkle of Hollywood glamour stopped the price from dropping too dramatically.
Huston paid €5,000 for St Clerans in 1954 after visiting Ireland a few times; he became an Irish citizen in 1964. He sold the house in 1971 and it passed through a few hands before being bought in 1997 by Griffin.
He converted St Clerans, built in 1784, into a 12-bedroom hotel with a separate octagonal lodge named the Angelica Suite, after Huston’s daughter, who spent much of her childhood there. Griffin died in 2007 and the hotel closed in 2008.
Meanwhile, another home with a Hollywood connection – this time owned by Fred Astaire’s daughter Ava Astaire McKenzie – has also sold. She and her husband, writer and artist Richard McKenzie, put Clonlea Cottage on 3.5 acres in Castlepoint near Schull, west Cork, up for sale for €525,000 less than a year ago.
They’d moved there from Beverly Hills in 1975 to raise their family and have now returned to the US. Clonlea sold for €360,000 through joint agents Coldwell Banker and Peninsula Properties in west Cork.
