Passing the torch of legendary Irish Olympian’s former West Cork home

THE torch is about to be passed on at the one-time West Cork home of former and great Irish Gold Medal Olympian athlete Bob Tisdall — ‘The Irish Wonder’ — who left his mark on Westerly Lodge in more ways than one — including extensively planting its array of trees in its the avenue and acres of grounds.

Possibly one of Ireland’s most colourful of athletic champions who lived the fullest of lives and careers around the world, Bob Tisdall set a world record, sub-52 seconds in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics 400m hurdles— just one of the highlights of a career that saw him live in places as diverse as Ceylon, Nenagh (his mother’s birthplace), Tanzania, and Queensland Australia … as well as here, at Adrigole on the Beara Peninsula, near some of the loveliest lengths of the Wild Atlantic Way.

Tisdall’s tenure at the early 19th century Westerly Lodge is put at the 1960s, when he planted much of the ground with evergreens, a mix of pines, cedars, spruce, along with its cover of mature beeches and purple flowering rhododendrons, reflecting perhaps his ‘official’ training in agriculture and forestry.

Trees and training? Prior to Tisdall’s Olympic success, he’d ‘trained’ by running around an orchard while living in a disused rail carriage after packing in his job having worked in India and travelling widely for a Maharajah of Baroda.

Later, he worked on a coffee plantation in Tanzania, before upping sticks for a farming life in Australia where having briefly ran with the Olympic torch at the Sydney Olympics aged 93, he died aged 97 years, following a bad fall on rocks: an Irish hipster before his time?

Waverly Lodge later passed into the hands of a couple who kept it for 40 or so years before its current owners, Dublin-based and now vendors after two decades care and much rehabilitation acquired it in 2007, then in need of considerable work.

At first the family who’d fallen for the beauty of the unspoiled Beara as a holiday destination and who saw huge appeal and scope at then down-at-heel Westerly, lived in the smaller of the two dwellings here, a c 1,000sq ft cottage. They did it up, adding creature comforts, upgrading the wiring and plumbing, adding central heating, double glazing and “making it a cosy place to live”.

Later, they went larger: The main house hadn’t been lived in for years, so they tackled that, reroofing and upgrading from top to bottom for a c 2,200 sq ft main residence, with a set of five Velux rooflights added over the first floor windows to flood the top floor of the tree-ringed home with light.

They “traded-up” and moved in in 2016, then using the cottage for family visitors and other guests, while the woman of the house who’s an artist created a first floor art studio, also light-flooded, above a garage.

The family say they have loved the years since here at the mix, all on six acres too, down for summer months and regular year-round visits but now feel it’s time to sell on, “to pass on the baton”or torch, while it’s in such great shape.

It’s just listed for sale with agent Sean Carmody of Charles P McCarthy based in Skibbereen who guides the entire property at €1.1m and who says its “an outstanding period property, with detached cottage and studio, as well as a number of pre-Famine era cottages (ironically in a scenic setting below the Beara’s brooding Hungry Hill), some roofed and in various states of repair”.

Simple corrugated sheeting is on some of the old cottages, other need similar simple remedies to stabilise them, whilst the gutted, reinstated, and reroofed main four-bed ‘lodge’ “is in excellent condition and exudes a lovely warmth and character,” says Mr Carmody, adding the decor “combines neutral colours, light-toned flooring and painted ceilings — it achieves a minimalist aesthetic that remains warmly inviting”.

VERDICT: Having taken on a renovation challenge in 2007, the vendors much-loved home on the lesser trafficked Beara peninsula is one for the well-heeled to do some serious running after.