It's 16 years since children's author Mary Murphy bought her house overlooking a bay between Clarinbridge and Kilcolgan, Co Galway. Technology enabled her to live and work remotely, and to build a successful career as writer and illustrator of about 40 books, some for babies as young as six months, many published by UK children's book publisher Walker Books.
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Now she wants to move back to Dublin – she grew up in Templeogue – to be near friends and is selling her house six doors down from Moran's of The Weir seafood restaurant. Her detached four-bed house on a third of an acre, The Weir, Kilcolgan, Co Galway, is for sale for €445,000 through Yvonne Sweeney Auctioneers, in Oranmore, Co Galway.
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Built in 1994, the detached 185sq m (2,000sq ft) cottage-style house is effectively a dormer bungalow, with upstairs bedrooms having Velux roof windows. Accommodation downstairs includes a cosy livingroom with a solid fuel stove, a kitchen/diningroom with a green Stanley range in a brick-lined alcove, a good-sized utility room and two bedrooms, one of them en suite. Murphy currently uses one of these as her workroom; there are glass French doors between the workroom and the livingroom There is also a downstairs toilet. The kitchen/diningroom is a good size, divided by a breakfast bar.
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Upstairs are two bedrooms, one en suite, a tiled family bathroom, and a tiny room next to the main bedroom that could be a nursery, study or sewing room, suggests the agent.
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Kilcolgan is about 19km from Galway city, about a half-hour drive. The house is 2km west of the N18, overlooking an estuary at Dunbulcaun Bay.