A very big (cheapish) house in the country

So one of my readers wrote me a perfectly civil email to say that, much as they liked last week's three Borders properties, the post lacked my "usual storytelling, invented narratives and edges", adding: "I think people like you weaving tales and fantasies about the properties." 
Fair point, I felt.
There is a technical tension in that the more properties I pick, the more pictures I then use, and the fewer words I'm allowed (on the Substack version, that is. Blogger let's me twitter on forever).
And because a property has to be pretty damn special for me to devote a whole post to it (e.g. this or this), I've drifted into thinking I need to show you a set of properties each week, increasingly three. Which puts me in that pictures v. words tension and so I find myself focusing on the information words. As last week.
But actually that's not the whole reason for my missing "tales and fantasies". I think maybe it's that it's also getting harder to hang onto the storytelling in a world that just seems just so cruel, so cold. Rewriting information about a house seems easier than imagining the lived lives that it housed and might hold again.
Sorry about the darker turn there, but at least you know this is me writing and not Muse, or Claude, or AIother.
Shall we look at a property?
Comeragh House is a very big house in the country. The country being county Waterford in Ireland.
It's had a bit of a rough time, and there's a seriously dodgy past we'll get to in a minute, but first some pictures of this quite gorgeous Irish dame.

The house was built in 1820 or so, possibly for John Palliser. He lived there sporadically and retired to it, dying there, in his library, after a long walk.
Palliser had been part of the wealthy Protestant Anglo-Irish gentry hoovering up the 'big houses' and land wealth of Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

 A charming adventurer who'd failed to finish university or apply himself to work in Ireland, he traveled to the wildlands of North America and Canada in the 1850s, exploring, hunting with his white, half-wolf dog, leading expeditions and meeting with First Nations groups as a fellow hunter and horseman. There's a great piece by Eamonn McKee on Pallister and more here on his place in Canadian history. 
He died without marrying and the house, along with other family properties eventually passed via a niece to the Fairholme family.
In the 1920s, Comeragh House became one of the 275, mostly Protestant-owned, country houses targeted for destruction by the IRA during the Civil War. It was torched in 1923, Pallister's papers and house records burning with it, but rebuilt by the Fairholmes in 1925, according to its Heritage listing.
There's a long gap and then Comeragh is bought in 1964 by Pieter Menten, a wealthy Dutch art collector, and his wife.
They lived in splendid isolation on their Irish estate for a decade before Menten is revealed as a Nazi war criminal linked to the deaths of Polish Jews.

He's tried and jailed in Holland and, while this is going on, Comeragh House is torched again - this time reputedly by Israeli Mossad agents rather than the IRA; Menten's art collection having already disappeared.
After his death in 1987, Menten's wife puts the now pretty-wrecked estate up for sale and it's bought by a champagne-loving English couple who spend seven years restoring it to glory. Much of what they did - the glorious bathroom ceilings, the richly-painted rooms, is still there. Of sorts.

They put in on the market in 2011 for an optimistic 3m euro and, whatever it eventually sold for, its new owners don't seem to have shared the renovation drive, given how much has drifted into disrepair.
Now it's up for sale at just 850k euro (around £720k) - all 22 rooms, stables, steward's house, stone outbuildings, and 40 (yes, 40) acres of estate.

 
This is the sort of beefy renovation project that you pitch to Channel 4.
This is also a very beautiful house in a very beautiful part of coastal Ireland that's had a bit of a rough life - two too many attempts to burn it down and long periods of being left behind. Fingers crossed it finds owners rather than investors.
On the market through Sherry Fitzgerald at 850k euro. More on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

Obviously, this comes next...

Properties to renovate on Britain's islands

We were talking to this bloke in the pub, and he was telling us about his honeymoon on Scilly and how beautiful the island is.
Obvs I'd heard of the Isle of Scilly but, and here's where haphazard geography teaching gets you, I'd assumed it was up North somewhere, maybe off Scotland with all those other short name islands. Also, like that bloke, I thought it was one island.
But it's neither - Scilly is South, off Cornwall in fact, and is Isles. But then, you knew that didn't you? Just like you probably knew that the British Isles consists of 188 inhabited islands, including Great Britain, and that five of our inhabited islands are within the Isles of Scilly archipelago.
Where this got me to was thinking about the amazingness that comes from living on an island surrounded by clusters of sibling islands, and that I wanted to spend time focusing on those clusters.
I wrote about St Mary's, Scilly's largest island, back in March. And the property I featured (above) is still up for sale - here's that post. I noted the rarity of houses coming up for sale there, and the "Scilly" prices that created. That rarity is still an issue (I have nothing new on Scilly to show you).
But spending today looking around southern islands was actually quite dispiriting. Because that North/South property divide applies to our islands too. Higher prices in the South and too many rows of ugly boxy builds with little left to renovate.
That being said, I did find three interesting ones to show you. Starting with this proper wreck on the very lovely Isle of Man. Expensive, not least given it's cash buyers only at offers around £345k. But some works have already been done and it has planning permission to extend. 

In a gorgeous position on the island, surrounded by hills and a short drive to the harbour town of Peel.
A large farmhouse, with four potential bedrooms (once you finish building stairs and landing...) set in a big garden block. But, a hell of lot of work still to do and pay for.
On the market at cash offers around £345k through Manxmove. More pictures and details on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My second pick is on the Isle of Angelsey. It's actually two houses - semis - being sold as one property so fabulous scope to turn it into one lovely big country house, or develop as two homes for friends.

Both properties have a lounge, kitchen and bathroom downstairs, and three bedrooms upstairs. They  share a gated drive and large parking area, with good-size gardens each.
One house is in better condition that the other in terms of the work needed and the second house looks like it's been empty quite a while.

The location's fabulous - views of the sea and the mountains, and more-or-less midway between the beach at Porth Trwyn and the village of Llanfaethlu.
On the market at £275k through Williams & Goodwin. Details and more pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.
My last property to show you is on the Isle of Sheppey, in Kent. I'm not entirely convinced by the designation 'Isle' for Sheppey, given it's bridges and ease of access, but that has driven its popularity. 

This detached house is on Sheerness's High Street and walking distance to the sea front.
It's a time-stopped, three-bedroom detached house with a lovely walled garden. And if you're a fan of 'mid-century modern', let me introduce you to Blundeston House's take on the 70s.

On the market at £250k through Wards. More pictures on the agent's site here and on Rightmove here.

Three coastal properties (P.S. I'm back)

So, last time we got together, a few days over three years ago, things were looking pretty ok. Covid done, Trump v1 gone, and Truss replaced. But I was knackered.

Like lots of you, I started to shed the things that, as they say, were no longer giving me joy and one of those was Wreck of the Week. I put it on hold in case I got my property mojo back, but also because I knew how important it was to many of my readers as an archive of how we'd love to live.

Anyway, me and my mojo have been reunited and I'm making time for Wreck again. 

So, let's get the ball rolling with three interesting coastal properties that sum up the Wreck ethos - detached, peaceful, space, and some "challenges".

This first one is sort-of down the road and around several windy bends from me, which means I can tell you that the agent photos are rubbish - it's got a lot more kerb appeal than the drone shots suggest.

It's at Waxholme, on the gorgeous East Holderness coast, with a decent amount of farmland between the house and our eroding cliffs.

Formerly two properties, the mill house and cottage, now operating as one home, plus a jumble of outbuildings, a large plot of land and garden (0.4 acres) and the remains of Black Mill - which reportedly inspired Tolkien. 

There are four bedrooms across the conjoined houses, upstairs bathroom and downstairs loo, three reception rooms, kitchen, utility room and large attached garage. 

The complexity is that, while the property has been lived in as one home, the house and cottage are still listed separately on the land registry and no planning permission covering the work to join them.

Which probably explains why it's listed for auction. 

Auction runs online from noon on December 1st to 1pm on December 3rd, with a guide price of £200k. Details and more pictures on Rightmove here and at agents Auction House here.

Here, by the way, is the video I shot today of my own bit of coast.

And while we're on the subject of cliffs, Hollis Morgan has this 1.4 acre chunk of cliff and beach in Portishead, near Bristol, up for auction next week.

I don't understand how it's still possible, in 2025, to be able to buy and sell freehold a strip of beach, nor quite what you'd do with it (pitch a tent, watch the dog walkers pass by, wait for the sea, study the exceptional geology?), but with a guide price of £10-30k, owning this view of the Bristol Channel may be enough.

Up for auction on November 19th. Details and more pictures here.

Hang on, Portishead?? Cue a favourite song.

And finally, HERE is a proper coastal wreck.

Two bedroom cottage, with two acres of land, great views, and less than 2km from the stunning White Strand Beach on Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way. And on the market for just 145k euro (about £128k).

So far, so amazing. Here come the challenges...

There are two rooms downstairs and two upstairs, all with open fires. A shower, sink and loo has been added to one of the downstairs rooms. As the estate agent puts it: "Its traditional layout offers a warm, rustic feel". Indeed.

It is however in a quite spectacular coastal location and close enough to a village (Castlecove, county Kerry) and positioned on the N70, to make access to materials and trades easier.

On the market through agents Eleanor Connor-Scarteen at 145k euro. Details and more pictures here.