Check out West Cork’s Fjord Focus, in Schull home with family inspiration from Arts and Crafts architect

THERE is no mistaking the fact you are in West Cork here, looking due west out over Dunmanus Bay to the peninsular guard points of the tip of Sheeps Head and Dunlough on the Mizen, south and west… but for this house, Four Blues itself?

 There’s something truly international about its design.

No surprise: its owners Jack and Julia Zagar are travellers, having lived and worked in many parts of the globe, including periods sailing around the fjords of Norway, working in reservoir engineering/the oil industry in the North Sea, Middle East, the US, and the Gulf of America … sorry, Gulf of Mexico, as the rest of the world will continue to call it.

It was back in the late 1990s, as Ireland’s Celtic Tiger was flexing its claws, that the Zagars, with a son Patrick and a daughter Anne then aged eight and nine years of age, sought a change of lifestyle: independent of spirit, they thought about Ireland, advertised for a rental in The Irish Times, reckoned that the Southwest might have the best weather (ahem?) and flew over from their antebellum home in New Orleans to view half a dozen or so places.

They swiftly opted for a nearly finished small house in West Cork’s Rossbrin, between Ballydehob and Schull after visiting Schull in full sunshine, during a lively regatta Calves Week “if they could put in a kitchen for us”.

That was in August 1997. By September, their children were enrolled in school in Schull, later going to Schull Community College, and artist Julia and Jack were making deeper plans for stronger roots.

They came across locally-living architects Dietrich and Hildegard Eckhardt who’ve left quite a skilled design mark across swathes of West Cork for up to 40 years.

They had them adapt a house design where planning had been granted on c three wild acres on the flanks of Mount Gabriel at Gloun, above Schull on the Mizen Peninsula: importantly, it was to include some of the design legacy of Julia’s grandfather, John Archibald Campbell, who also left a design legacy in the early half of the 20th century in many parts of the UK, notably Cornwall, as well as Berlin, and Munich.

A number of features of Campbell’s extensive house Chapel Point at Mevagissey, Cornwall, are recreated on a smaller scale here at Schull’s Four Blues, most notably the conical room on a circular tower section, and in a barrel-roofed sunken dining area between this home’s large kitchen and even larger main living room and bow-ended conservatory/west-facing sun spot.

“We use the dining room every day,” Julia says when asked about her family’s home’s favoured ‘red dot’ spot, pointing to one seat at the table with its choice of views via either or both of tall, slender multi-paned windows: she explains architect Dietrich Eckhardt’s own philosophy that windows should frame views, not just be a vast expanse of glass opening up unfiltered vistas.

Thus, the placement of so, so many windows across the main façade, grouped but irregularly shaped, in small paned sections in cedar, with Douglas Fir frames, with American Douglas Fir also used in much of the interior joinery as it is finer grained than Irish varieties, say the Zagars.

In keeping with the Arts and Crafts ethos, build materials matter: thus, this extensive, c 3,150 sq ft detached home — finished just in time for the millennium — conceals much of its bulk under different roof sections, done in Spanish quarry slate, with the same slate also used in sills and floors in entrance rooms (mixed in a gridpattern with beach pebbles in the main hall), sunken dining room, main stairway, and service rooms.

The double aspect kitchen has a teak floor, with enormous 10’ long and almost 5’ wide, Danish oiled pristine teak island, and worktops and drainers around two ceramic sinks, while the heartbeat is a large black multi-oven Aga oven (with gas burner to the side), also appreciated by daughter Anne Zagar, a chef and owner of 51 Cornmarket in Cork City, when in cheffy company back home here in West Cork.

The oil-fired Aga (Jack Zagar never quite shook off his old industry background?!) is Julia’s pride, and also her particular joy, for several reasons. One, lesser likely one? She stops to remove and cradle a much polished rounded stone from one of the lower warming ovens which she says she takes with her wrapped in a towel when wild and sea swimming on colder days from the hillside base.

The couple’s earlier years — time spending living and cruising around Norway on yachts — is recalled in the style of flooring in the main living/sun room section: it’s done in narrow plank pale American oak, with dark caulking in between, very much luxury boat deck in look and feel, and in what it evokes for them. Workmanship, and joinery skills throughout here, are exemplary in this 25-year-old build, done by Eckhardts’ Home & Design Ltd construction company, in a hybrid mix of timber frame and solid masonry, depending on load bearing needs.

It’s a wide house, broken in sections in height and scale and uses, with a very ‘adult’ feel and air, down to calm design and artworks and furnishing and finishes, yet with a bit of fun, such as in a bedroom done ship’s cabin-style back in day one, for the children with boat bunk style hinged doors and optional pull-out bed under for sleep-overs: it’s now as equally enjoyed by grandchildren.

Jack and Julia are ready to ‘right-size now’ into retirement years, likely to Schull village: they’ll have a lot of stuff to decant out of Four Blues (the evocative name comes from a Nordic description of distance at sea).

Theirs is a spacious four-bed home, but having the four split in two sections with two staircases, each serving two might not suit families with very young children; others will relish it. It has lots of storage options all fully utilised up to now, with precious, large walk-in wardrobes/dressing rooms off two of the principal en suite bedrooms, as well as a full-stocked larder/pantry off the high ceilinged utility/laundry room with its back wall warmed by the powerful Aga on the other side of the thick block dividing wall.

There’s a south-aspected gable end conservatory on the far end, previously used as a greenhouse and which could be linked back into the main dwelling via Julia’s art and textiles studio/family room, or via an adjunct workroom with external courtyard access: there’s also a garage/storage room for garden equipment. ride-on mower etc, also previously used for storing sailing, fishing, and golf paraphernalia.

The distinctive home is on over 2.5 acres, now extensively landscaped and planted with mostly native species and trees, shelter belt planting, orchard with wild meadow grasses ringed around the fruit trees, and with low flower and shrub beds near the stone patios and terraces.

A covid investment was a good-sized, commercial grade polytunnel, tall enough to allow beds on either side plus a centre bed with well advanced tomatoes, with a bit of frivolity from blooming frilly poppies, and outside are further fruit and vegetable beds, whilst there’s also a pond at a lower boundary for bird, bug and frog life at this lifestyle, privately set Mizen peninsula option.

Set up an elevated quiet road just west and uphill of Schull and Lowertown, a seven- to 10-minute drive from Schull itself, Four Blues is on the June 2025 market with agent Colm Cleary of James Lyons Auctioneers with a €895,000 AMV.

Like its cosmopolitan/international roots, design and build legacy, it’s likely to have an appeal to overseas and relocating buyers from o’er the waves, as well as to well-heeled and welly-shod Irish natives looking for a superbly built home, on acres of
private grounds, with sea and peninsula views to thrive on.

VERDICT: Distinctively different with design elan and a very grown-up
demeanour