A FORMER coastguard station on Ballisodare Bay in Co Sligo has come on the market asking €2.75 million.
The renovated property, which once housed five families, is now an impressive home on seven acres of waterfront land with its own slipway and boathouse.
Located about 14 miles from Sligo town, Dunkeld, Dromard, is for sale through joint agents Knight Frank and the Oates Breheny Group. It’s a large five-bedroom house with 410sq m (4,470sq ft) that includes five reception rooms, one of them a charming observatory-style sittingroom with windows on all sides. Bedrooms are large and airy, and four out of five have en suite bathrooms.
There is a very large kitchen and a series of useful storerooms and offices as well as a boot room and a shell room. A sheltered courtyard behind the house has a number of outbuildings, including garages and a greenhouse.
The station was built in 1873 by the OPW and was originally designed to accommodate four boatmen, one officer, and their families. The 1901 census recorded that the men and their wives and 14 children were resident there, but by 1911 the station was empty. It was occupied by the post office for a few years, but was attacked by the IRA in 1919.
After that it was abandoned until the 1960s when an Irish American architect partially restored the building. It was fully restored in the 1980s by a German hotelier who used it as a holiday home. It is now owned by an English family who bought it five years ago and carried out further improvements including the addition of broadband and CCTV security.
