High on an elevated site, a couple of kilometres outside the village of Creeslough, on west Donegal’s Wild Atlantic Way, is the Ards peninsula. This is the place selected by the Capuchins to set up a friary in the 1930s on the site of an old manor house belonging to the Stewart family.
It remains a retreat house and is evolving into a contemplative ecology centre. The promontory faces south with beguiling views of the bay’s inlets, and you can see across the water to Downings in Rosguill.
From Aghalattive, a contemporary A3-rated home constructed about five years ago on 1.7 acres about a kilometre from the friary, you can see all the way to Doe Castle, the medieval stronghold of the Mac Sweeney’s. It’s a place where chief Eoghan Og II gave shelter to survivors of the1588 Spanish Armada fleet at Doe, while Maolmhuire an Bhata Bhui, the last chieftain, marched out with Red Hugh O’Donnell, to the Battle of Kinsale in 1601.
In the other direction you can see the tabletop shape of Muckish mountain, which sits like a sphinx above Creeslough, guarding it and its hinterlands.
The home’s owner, Billy Doherty, drummer with Derry band The Undertones, has found it “hard to beat”, to quote a lyric from the group’s 1978 single Teenage Kicks. John Peel, then godfather of the airwaves, played the song twice in one night on his eponymous show.
“Something clicked with me in Ards,” says the musician who spent his summers in Co Donegal.
“I fell in love with the place,” he explains. “It’s unique, very relaxing and you get caught up in the vibe.” He heard there was a site for sale, but it had been taken off an online property portal so he decided to go see it. A white van followed him up the bohereen and when the man got out he asked him if he was the owner and was able to negotiate a price there and then.
Set on 1.7 acres, the property runs up to the hill to the Coilte-owned Ards Forest Park which boasts woodland trails, rivers, lakes, megalithic tombs and deer. It takes about 20 minutes to walk to the beach, but longer on the way back as it’s uphill. From the beach, where there is a cafe and children’s playground, there is a boardwalk all along the southern side to the friary, past some of Donegal’s best swim spots.
From the cantilevered garden house, you can see the same deer walk across the estuary at low tide. Three or four of them hang around Doherty’s back garden “like teenagers” until you get close and they scatter, returning to dine on any remaining leaves.
The A3 Ber-rated detached four-bedroom house, which extends to 211sq m (2,281 sq ft) opens into a large hall. Currently the first of the four bedrooms, which is en suite, is to the right. To the left is an open-plan kitchen and a livingroom which leads through to a west-facing sunroom.
Upstairs there are three more bedrooms. The principal has a dressing room and an en suite bathroom.
Three of the four bedrooms have en suite bathrooms, all two-tone in colour, featuring 1970s-style coloured basins and toilets, sea green and blue contrasts in one, peach and grey in another and avocado in another where it is paired with marigold yellow tiling.
Also on the property is a detached double garage that extends to 66sq m (710sq ft), where you could store boats and other water sports equipment.
There isn’t a drum kit in sight. “I never practise in the house,” he says. “They’re far too loud. You’d hear them in Letterkenny.” The town is about a 20-minute drive away.
Doherty spends much of the year on tour with the band and has some health issues that mean he doesn’t get to spend as much time here as he’d like. Agents Savills is seeking €695,000 for the property.
