NEW YORK BOSTON |#Popular: Irish Celebrity Gossip Irish in US Politics Irish Festivals Irish Roots Irish Entertainment Offbeat Irish

Home Page > News > News From Ireland > Buy your own Irish Island for the price of a family home

Buy your own Irish Island for the price of a family home

Chance of a lifetime to own an actual Emerald Isle

EVELYN TIERNAN,

IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 7:35 AM

Updated Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 11:20 AM

Larger Text

E-mail

36 Comments

Chance of a lifetime to own an actual Emerald Isle

‘Imagine! John Lennon living on his Irish Island off the coast of Mayo’

‘TV programme shows off Irish island in full glory’

Fancy owning a private island off the unspoilt coasts of Ireland? Well now you can choose between three beautiful private islands with all their historical glory to have as your own.

Even with Ireland's crippling economic downturn you can still buy a private Irish island for the same price as a 2 bedroom terraced house in Dublin city. Three of Ireland's many islands are on sale at privateislandonline.com, a website aimed at the rich and famous.

Mannions Island located in picturesque Dunmanus Bay, West Cork is on sale for €150,000, that's $219.446. The island is within 200 metres of the shore where there is a newly constructed pier and is walking distance from Durrus Village. The website also adds that the island is approximately 60 percent fertile and south facing with a small sheltered cove to the east of the island. There is no house, building or ruin on this four-acre Island.

Another Irish island on view at this ‘private islands for sale’ website is Island Mor in Clew Bay, Co. Mayo which is 70-acres and up for sale for the asking price of €902.000 ($1,320.000). Clew Bay is a natural ocean bay with Ireland's best examples of sunken drumlins which are islands formed from glacier movements during the first ice age.

There are stunning views of the Inish Gort lighthouse and the surrounding North Mayo Mountains and Croagh Patrick holy mountain from the island. The natural shape of this island bestows a well protected natural cove and a secure mooring place for boats. It also has its own pier, its own fresh running water and has electricity in place.

Claim to fame - John Lennon from The Beatles bought the 19-acre Dorinish Island in Clew Bay for just IR£1700 at the height of his fame.

Mutton Island is also up for sale and is situated one mile off Seafield Harbour on the West Coast of County Clare. It lies 10 miles south of the Cliffs of Moher and 20 miles south of the Aran Islands and Galway Bay. The east of the island contains the ruins of two cottages, a disused graveyard and the site of a cross and oratory as well as several walled fields. This 185-acre gem of grassland with a freshwater lake and several spring water wells is going for an undisclosed sum.

Interestingly, by 548 AD, the first recorded building was erected there by St. Senan who built a church and founded a monastic settlement while on his way from the Aran Islands to the Shannon Estuary.

According to tradition, Mutton Island gets its name from the sheep that landed there off a wrecked Spanish Armada Ship called the Zuniga which floundered on its coast in 1588.

In the early 1700s, it was used for wine and tobacco smuggling with a telegraph watchtower and keep built by the coastguard to keep vigil for a French invasion that never happened.

Since then, Mutton Island has had a quiet pastoral history as a self-sufficient continually inhabited island supporting up to twelve families, the last of whom left in 1948.

Let the bidding begin!

READ MORE:
‘Imagine! John Lennon living on his Irish Island off the coast of Mayo’

‘TV programme shows off Irish island in full glory’

Nster.com

E-mail

36 Comments

15 - 36 | See all comments

falconflash | May 13, 2011, 05:49 PM EDT

Religion is culture. No one can knock out the Catholic religion (Jesus said so) and as long as the Irish embrace Catholicism their Irish/Catholic culture will endure.... the only threat to the Irish culture comes from the Irish themselves as they slowly but surely reject the Church via secularism, abortion, homo marriage etc, all frowned upon by the Church........

Report abuse

sirpeter | May 13, 2011, 08:14 AM EDT

Yes Georgy Boy..All Irish Culture was made illegal after 1690.Course a law is one thing,enforcing it is another. The fact that you were discriminated against under English rule if you didn't know English FORCED Irish parents to stop using the Irish language.Coercion!!Wrong again Georgy.

Report abuse

sirpeter | May 13, 2011, 07:57 AM EDT

Georgy Boy and your Woundedbolix Read this:Friday,May 13,2011:A court in Belfast today rejected a legal bid to overturn a 270-year-old ban on the use of Irish language in Northern Ireland court proceedings.Clearly there is a major issue with a 273-year-old law that bans the use of the indigenous language of Ireland in the courts in part of Ireland>>>>>Battle of the Boyne in 1690:As a result of these defeats, Irish lands and property were forfeit and all things that made up the richness of native Irish culture were banned. The Irish language itself was made illegal: to speak, write or use. Thus, their very names were outlawed; replaced wholesale by English names or gaelicizations of English names supplied by their oppressors.

Report abuse

Collette2 | May 13, 2011, 05:13 AM EDT

I'll make sure everybody who claims their Irish roots put in and a buy a lottery ticket. Wouldn't it be just fine and Guiness all round if I win. Hangers on welcomed.

Report abuse

deburca | May 12, 2011, 04:33 PM EDT

@ Woundedknee the Brits occupied Ireland for 700 years and yes, they banned the Irish language and did their best to wipe out the Irish culture. Gaelic football wasn't allowed either. It's not hard to find out the facts.

Report abuse

suzandpej | May 12, 2011, 09:40 AM EDT

I wish I could afford to take my disabled son on a trip to Ireland...I'd be happy with that!

Report abuse

Wiccess | May 07, 2011, 12:05 AM EDT

Believe it or not I'm actually gonna lookin to it.

Report abuse

sullivab | May 01, 2011, 08:46 PM EDT

Aah, if not to dream... what would we have left, escaping the rat race of suburban living to live your days on an island in peace and tranquility listening to the soothing sounds of the surf and gulls around you, and in Ireland yet, that magical, mystical place. But back to reality, not very realistic. With the understandable sentiment of the Irish people seeing their beloved land sold away, I think you would be destined to forever stay on that island void of a trip for necessities or to the pubs for a chat, for if you did you would not like what you would hear. I'm sorry to hear you had to move from your island antoman; that would be devastating. Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor (the "rock") and the best of luck to you.

Report abuse

jacersagain | Apr 30, 2011, 05:09 PM EDT

If a person who owns any piece of property in Ireland (or anywhere) wants to sell it, then s/he is entitled to do so. A house can be put up for sale. A farm with acres of land can be too - so why not an island comprising a few acres of land off the coast of Ireland? These island sales are not about selling Ireland; they are just straightforward property transactions in the making. Personally, I think the idea of owning an island off the beautiful coast of Ireland is romantic. Practically, I think it would be a nightmare to own and live on one... you’d have to traverse the sea in a boat to get there and back. What about needing electricity, potable water? What would you do with toilet wastes? Need sugar, milk or a jar of coffee? No shops to run down to. What about a yearning for a beer and chat in the pub some night? You’d have to row to the mainland for your pints & chat and then row back across a choppy sea... inebriated, in the dark of night, possibly take a wrong turn on the waves and end up in Amerikay, or, worse, in the UK, or worse still, missing forever. No thanks, I wouldn’t like to own a little island, however beautiful it might be.

Report abuse

WoundedKnee | Apr 30, 2011, 03:07 PM EDT

ScullysSoulmate: Your version of history is total bunk and nonsense. When did the English make it a crime to speak Gaelic? Or not play GAA? Are you claiming it was among the Penal Laws? It wasn't. How about you tell us when this law was enacted and how long it lasted? You can't of course, because you're living in LeprechaunLand. The fact is that the Irish people one by one, parent by parent, decided to kill the language by not transmitting it to their children. It's a very rare event, that a people abandons its language in its own country. A lot of Hispanics abandon Spanish here, and don't pass it on to their children, but at least they have the reason that they are living in a foreign country where English is King. I suppose you could argue that Ireland was a foreign country to many of its inhabitants, since they were cut off from government, business, the law etc. Nevertheless other People in Europe were similarly cut off from power, but they didn't react by throwing their language on the garbage heap, or if they did, once they had the opportunity they sought to revive it e.g Catalans in Spain, Latvians in Latvia. No, there was something really sick about the way Irish people even demanded that their children be beaten if they were caught speaking Irish at school. It's easy to see how this mentality a century later gave rise to child sex abuse by clergy and inaction by cowed and servile parents.

Report abuse

diannerae | Apr 30, 2011, 09:30 AM EDT

I wish we could afford to buy any one of them and I know my spouse would love to own an island.

Report abuse

Oclearmada | Apr 29, 2011, 12:04 AM EDT

X-file persons... In response, to Britons being bastards... We Irish still prevailed, is there Romans? Is there Helvetti? English are not even English anymore. They actually never were. However, against all odds, we Irish are still alive and have the most popular pubs in America and everyone knows us as good drinkers and thinkers. However, this whole lets use every discussion to discuss our hatred of protestants, maybe we should have our own forum for that. Ireland will always be owned by the Irish people. However, it seems every country is selling its bits off to make up for debt. So, Ireland is suffering the same as Iceland and USA, Russia and the rest. For instance the Hollywood sign in California was actually sold and the land around it because of state debt.

Report abuse

ScullysSoulmate | Apr 28, 2011, 08:27 PM EDT

WoundedKnee - So sorry to break the "fairytale" you are living in, but you are not correct. The brits made it a penal crime to speak Gaelic, a crime for which the Irish could be instantly arrested and imprisoned with no trial. It was also illegal to play gaelic sports (hence the start of Austrailian rules rugby which was in fact the irish prisoners in Australia playing gaelic football but breaking into a scrum when the guards came along), play Gaelic music, etc. Maureen - NOW you have hit the jackpot - the Irish game of paying planning application fees, and more and more, until finally you are denied planning lol.

Report abuse

WoundedKnee | Apr 28, 2011, 06:11 PM EDT

adrienrain: What you say is nonsense. There was no "theft" of the Irish language. The Irish of their own volition abandoned the language. Millions of parents refused to speak it to their children, instead preferring to speak to their children in Leprechaun English. What the Irish did, abandon their own heritage and language, was weird and unprecedented anywhere. It's no wonder they're all screwed up psychologically.

Report abuse

WoundedKnee | Apr 28, 2011, 06:08 PM EDT

They should make the whole island a theme park, and have some of the fools who post here (sirpeter, seamusmoore etc.) dressed out and wandering around in leprechaun suits. Give them free drink--that'll keep 'em happy!

Report abuse