Ship Shaped House | Roaringwater Journal

It’s been five years! That’s a long time to have kept up a journal, with original pieces appearing every week – usually two, each of us writing a post. It keeps us busy: 464 posts to date. We thought we should do a review of the posts which have been most popular: viewed by the most people. These are not necessarily the ones we would consider to be our own favourites: we’ll let you know what we feel our ‘finest hour’ has been next week – while you are all preparing the Christmas lunch!

We never quite understood the all-time popularity of Beyond Leap, Beyond the Law, my post which was simply a collection of photos taken at the West Cork village’s 2015 Scarecrow Festival – with a little bit of history about the place added in. It was certainly a wonderful display of the imagination of the people of Leap. Have a look at the post: just one or two photographs don’t do it justice.

Up next is Finola’s piece from 2016 – Outposts of Empire. This was a much more scholarly article, and involved a lot of research. As you must know, we never pass a church or a burial ground without a full investigation: they provide a wealth of local history. Finola became fascinated by the memorials – mainly military – which appear in Protestant churches around the country. This led her down the path of her own ancestors, many of whom served in the Irish regiments of the British forces. She found this wonderful photo from around 1900 of her Brabazon forebears. Her grandmother Marie is in the centre of the back row, while her great grandfather John Edward Brabazon, who had served in India and Afghanistan, wears a military medal. The two younger men are Finola’s great uncles Michael and James, and they are wearing the uniform of the Royal Hibernian Military School.

Finola’s series on ‘how to speak like a West Cork person’ was a winner, the most popular being her fifth episode: How Are You Keeping? Here is a link to all of them. They make amusing reading, but at the same time they give a lot of insights as to how the Irish language has coloured the way English is spoken here. And here is Finola’s great picture from that post: two Skibbereen gentlemen who might well be asking how are you keeping?

Archaeology comes next, with my account of a most eccentric decorated chambered cairn within the Boyne Valley complex: Fourknocks – the Little Giant. I was particularly taken with the adventure of visiting this tomb, from the first moment of having to collect the key from a farm a mile away in order to let ourselves in, to the experience of being inside with the door shut behind us: total darkness at first, but gradually becoming aware of the remarkable 5,000 year-old zigzag carvings on the rock surfaces within.

I’m pleased that the fifth most popular post of all time is also the one I most enjoyed writing: Aweigh in Kerry. This was all about a very unusual piece of architecture which we found while travelling in Kerry – a house shaped like a ship, sitting in the sand dunes on the shoreline of Ballycarnahan townland, facing a most spectacular view across to Derrynane, the home of ‘Ireland’s Liberator’ Daniel O’Connell. I was an architect in a former life, and I would have welcomed a commission such as this. It was built in the early 1950s.

Sixth and last in this little review is a post from Finola (happily, we had three each in this list of the top most popular posts!): Castle Haven. Such an account of a place in magical West Cork – which typically offers everything anyone could want in beautiful landscape, village architecture, archaeology, history, literary heritage, art and the omnipresent Atlantic coastline – is exactly what we aspired to for the foundation stone of Roaringwater Journal when we set out, in 2012 on this happy, continuing journey.

Adrift on the shoreline of Ballycarnahan townland in County Kerry is a most wonderful piece of architecture. It is a ship shaped house, seemingly half buried in the sand dunes, its prow and bridge emerging and facing one of Ireland’s most spectacular views.

The view from the Ship House: across the water is Derrynane, the home of ‘Ireland’s Liberator’ Daniel O’Connell (soon to be featured on Roaringwater Journal). The Kerry mountains make a splendid backdrop

The house in the dunes was built as a holiday home by Francis and Ros Horgan of Macroom in the early 1950s. It is still owned by the Horgan family. As an architect myself I wondered about the history of the design: did the inspired idea of the ‘ship’ come from the clients? Or was it dreamed up by the architect? In which case the clients would have to be commended for going along with such a daring (and witty) concept.

Houses made from boats and marooned forever on dry land are not unknown: below are a couple from California; the Kerry house, however, is a purpose-built ‘one off’. Architectural ‘ship’ symbolism can also be found elsewhere in Ireland: the new Library in Dun Laoghaire by Carr Cotter + Neassens Architects has a definite nautical theme, appropriate for its site overlooking Dublin’s Dun Laoghaire Harbour.

Dun Laoghaire’s new library – the Lexicon – in the right of the picture above, acknowledges its maritime setting (photograph courtesy The Irish Times)

We were in Kerry visiting cousins of Finola: all of them were brought up in Lamb’s Head, just beside the Ship House. They were a mine of information on the house, which had been built by their grandfather Crohane Donnelly (he was named after the local saint) at a cost of one thousand pounds. Over breakfast this morning at Lamb’s Head, enjoying the same view across the bay to Derrynane House, I was delighted when cousin Annie came in with a newspaper cutting from the Daily Mirror dating from St Patrick’s Day 1969: the headline was Ahoy! It’s the Cosy Home that is Always Ship Shape, and it was all about the Ship House.

The house is named St Anne. I gleaned from the newspaper article that …she was one of Mrs Horgan’s favourite saints. A mass was celebrated when the house was “launched”, after the site had originally been blessed by Cardinal Griffin…

The upper deck of the three tier house – the wheelhouse – has a ship’s wheel which came from the HMS Pluto, which was being broken up in Cork. The lower deck, within the concrete ‘hull’, houses a garage and workshop, is known as ‘the hold’ and is lit by portholes. There is even a gangplank leading to the front door!

Quoting the Mirror: …Mrs Hogan, a quietly humorous Irishwoman in her fifties, explained how it all came about. “I’ve always had a great love for this spot, since I first came here at the age of five,” she said. ‘My husband and I used to come here every year for our holidays. We both loved the sea and boats.” She said that Mr Horgan, an engineering director and farmer from Macroom, Co Cork, worked on the plans with an architect. “First of all it was going to be a round house, then it just evolved into a ship. But,” she smiled, “I think that was what my husband wanted in the first place…”

In 1969 …The house now sprouts a TV aerial and has mains electricity. But Mrs Gorgan rather regrets it. “When we had a diesel engine for lighting, it used to chug-chug away. At night, looking across the bay, you felt you were sailing in a real ship right out at sea. I miss the diesel for that…”

Perhaps one day I will get to have a look inside the ship house – I wonder how the rooms are laid out? As well as bringing in the electric there are some obvious upgrades which have taken place – there are modern windows installed and the roof looks to have been renewed. But it’s still a holiday home, owned and used by the Horgan’s children. It must be one of the most unusual and eccentric holiday hideaways in Ireland!

Stop Press Since publishing this post yesterday, Cousin Annie has forwarded some more information. An album of photographs which were taken during the construction process was reproduced in the Caherdaniel Parish Magazine in 2014, with the permission of the Horgan family (owners) and the Donnelly family (builders). It’s a great contemporary record of an unusual project and some of those photographs are put together in this slide show – thanks, Annie!

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Here’s the final picture from that collection, worthy of a place of its own. It shows the completed project and the Donellys who built it. Crohane Donnelly, Annie’s grandfather, is on the left…

Ros Horgan (pictured below in the Mirror article) deserves the last word: …Her eyes twinkled. “The archaeologists in years to come are going to have a lot of trouble with this one. They are going to ask: ‘In what era did they have concrete ships?’…”

Thanks to all Finola’s Kerry cousins and their families for their memories and information on the Ship House, and for the wonderful hospitality which they heaped upon us during our visit. And thank you to Finola for allowing me to use her superb picture on the header, which would otherwise have featured in her own Into The Kingdom post!

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The view from the Ship House: across the water is Derrynane, the home of ‘Ireland’s Liberator’ Daniel O’Connell (soon to be featured on Roaringwater Journal). The Kerry mountains make a splendid backdrop

Dun Laoghaire’s new library – the Lexicon – in the right of the picture above, acknowledges its maritime setting (photograph courtesy The Irish Times)

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