Cork’s Bunnconnellans up for grabs for €1.9m — but could it be bought as a single seaside home?

What started in the 1820s as a small cottage over a small cliff became a tenacious bar, hotel, and restaurant, clinging to an ocean-fronting site like a barnacle, battered by storms like Ophelia, surviving boom years and lean years, from the Famine to the latest global pandemic, as well as the rise and fall of economic tides.

Bunny’s has been a go-to destination for generation of Cork families, overseas visitors, returnees, and seasoned regulars, with some couples and circles of friends going weekly, over decades.

It has hosted yachties and other blow-ins, seaside revellers, the bucket and spade brigade, warmed up hardy year-round sea swimmers, and tickled the taste buds of gastro pub admirers who could, literally eat and drink in the views of this most unique and identifiable Cork setting.

Now, as Bunny’s comes for sale for the first time in almost half a century, guided at €1.9 million agents Savills’ Cork office, its future could see it turn full circle, back to a spot for a one-off house (or, two, or a few) above the rocks and reefs and the wild Atlantic.

It could go any which way, blown in the winds of a full-force property market with wind in its sails and sales post-covid, with a premium put on coastal homes generally and a steady supply of high-net worth buyers of multi-million euro private homes, on private acres?

Yet, might it stay almost recognizably as it stands, only in new appreciative hands? 

Might it be added to a hospitality group’s existing portfolio, such as Press Up Entertainment, or the Blue Haven Collection, or other surprise buyer who’ll rock up to the premises, down the long avenue to the spot where the panorama unfurls, against a backdrop of shipping activity, cruise liners, private superyachts, pleasure craft, fishing trawlers and/or naval manoeuvres, coming in and out of the mouth of Cork harbour?

If patrons and ‘regulars’ had the casting vote, this might well be it!

Might it get some limited redevelopment? Residential or some mixed use? Or, be upgraded further to a boutique hotel and spa along the lines of Ardmore’s Cliff House?

If bought as a trophy home swoop by a Cork cognoscenti, there are already several examples of contemporary, money little object €1m+ builds along the Fountainstown to Myrtleville Coast Road – a new Ardbrack transposed from Kinsale? – and this ‘site’ (if that what’s it’s reduced to) will trump the lot.

Apart from the Coast Road strip du jour, other whoppers and key sites are also popping up at Fennells Bay (see p2 House of the Week,) and at Crosshaven’s Camden and Point Roads, at Fountainstown (where Sea la View has just popped up on the Price Register at €1.2m), with prices of up to €1.8m so far for Coast Road’s Medjez, and €1.275m for Nirvana, a contemporary upside-down home, fields back from the sea above Myrtleville itself.

So, might the sale of this offering, the famed Bunnyconnellan at €1.9 m set a new level for a some mogul’s mansion? If so, expect future tabloid headlines screaming ‘Bunny Money.’ 

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In its first hospitality iteration, guests got to stay in a seaside hotel here at Bunnyconnellan, after the location went from private use to commercial and hospitality in the 1940s and 1950s in the hands of Scotsman and kilt wearer McNeil Porteous and his wife Mary: a picture of McNeil Porteous, also known as Neill and more regularly as ‘Jock’ is in pride of place still in the bar’s beer garden.

But, a house has been in situ in the striking, breath-taking (literally, when winds are hight) spot where Bunnys now stands since 1824, when Irish born, and of Danish origin Sir Nicholas Trant reportedly built a small holiday home here for his daughter Clarissa, a diarist: in later years it got the local nickname ‘The Cottage on the Rocks.’ 

In the British army, Trant (1769-1839) fought in the Peninsular War as a Brigadier with 2,000 Portuguese irregular troops in the early 19th century, fighting the French at Coimbra, the Modego River and elsewhere, and clearly knew the value of a surveillance or defensive position….such as here by Myrtleville.

Arthur Wellesley the first Duke of Wellington said of Trant that he was “a very good officer, but a drunken dog as ever lived.”

If so, Trant may have enjoyed the temptations which came to pass here in the mid-20th century Bunny’s heyday…hey, everybody has their own tale to tell.

Jock and Mary Porteous sold to Irish buyers, Paddy and Sheila O’Brien in 1976 and the legend continued, with further development and change of focus, with the hotel side dropping off.

It was a family home also for the O’Briens for a number of years: they’d come to owned Bunnys after period owning the Marina bar in Cork city by Albert and Kennedy Quays (now, Goldbergs) and before they couple ran a bar and restaurant in London, says their son Paul who took over the reins in the 2000s and who continued to invest, with considerable sums gone into its ground floor bars and eating areas, beer garden etc.

Paul later bought the former Pine Lodge, opening it as the Lodge, and between the two venues he employed up to 80, and up to eight chefs at Bunnys alone.

Citing difficulties sourcing and accommodating staff post-covid, he’s decided to part with Bunnys, which reopened post-covid, but with reduced staff and last October announced on social media “it is with a heavy heart that we have decided to put Bunnys to sleep until this economic storm passes,” his post read.

Now taking the further step to sell, Mr O’Brien said the decision was “emotional, and a hard one to make,” noting the next generation hadn’t the interest to pass it on to. He is to continue to run the more easily managed The Lodge, just a half a kilometre away in Myrtleville, however.

Appointed selling agents Savills have a two-pronged approach for the sale of Bunny’s, which is over 6,000 sq ft on a total site of 5.2 acres, or about 3.5 of ‘brownfield’ site, with over half a kilometre of elevated shoreline frontage from Myrtleville beach to the diving rocks at Poulgorm, under the neighbouring classical villa, Atlantic House,, dating to the early 1900s, spanning both Savills’ residential and commercial departments at the quoted €1.9m guide.

Residential agent Catherine McAuliffe describes it as “iconic” and historic, “well renowned for over 80 years for serving the people of Cork and visitors to the area from the restaurant and bar with enviable ocean views,” “it’s ready for an exciting new chapter.” The potential of the site, she says, “ is endless.

Premium homes have been constructed or renovated in this particular stretch of coastline over the last number of years, but none with such a dramatic and private setting at Bunnyconnellan,” and says it’s set between two sandy beaches, over the hill from Crosshaven and the Royal Cork Yacht Club/RCYC  (300 years old and counting), and half an hour or so from Cork city and airport.

Perfect for a premium one-off residence the site is beautifully tucked away under the hill with wide long driveway and adjoining gardens overlooking the sea,” she adds, saying the extensive access also allows for “further potential for a niche residential development or indeed a high-end boutique hotel where ocean views would be at a premium.”

Current owner Paul O’Brien had briefly and unsuccessfully sought planning for a development of 26 apartments, back in the boomtime mid-2000s, but now admits “in hindsight that was excessive.” 

Today, Savills commercial director Peter O’Meara points to zoning which allows for continued use, and according to the 2022 Cork County Development Plan allows for existing residential/mixed residential and other uses, from one-off houses to small scale residential development, breaking up the main building and annex for multiple units, luxury/boutique hotel, other guest or special accommodation occupancy, or care home.

It also comes under Green Conservation zoning which controls ‘landscape amenity/ nature conservation: ironically, among Bunnyconnellan’s attractions ‘back in the day’ for children was a fish pond, and an aviary, both of which had to be removed a number of years’ back under HSE/Health and Safety request, according to Mr O’Brien.

VERDICT: Wouldn’t it be lovely to have Bunny Money?