'It's certainly the time to get a real island bargain on the west coast of Ireland.

It is now being sold by receivers and is on the market for a recession-reduced price of €2.85m.Īndrew Crowley, of the estate agents Sherry FitzGerald in Westport, said interest was high in both islands. The island covers 65 acres and includes tennis courts, four immaculately designed guest houses, farm buildings, a boat house and a pier and jetty. The main house overlooks the bay, as does its own infinity indoor swimming pool. Millionaire Nadim Sadek, an Irish-Egyptian businessman, bought Inishturk Beg 10 years ago and poured what local builders estimate to be up to €20m (£16m) into creating a stunning island hideaway. Others have also been coming to Clew Bay in search of something special. It's a grand little place, lovely, but we're getting on in age now and it's time to let it go.' The thing about the island is that no matter where the wind is coming from there's a spot that you could light a match in. It was just great pasture and we've had sheep and cattle out there. 'And we were keen on it because a few generations back our ancestors had lived out here in the island next door, so it meant something. 'She said she'd like it to go back to the Irish that would use it,' said Michael Gavin. Yoko Ono sold the island in 1984 to the Gavin brothers, donating the sale price to an Irish orphanage. John Lennon told the New York Times he planned to retire to Dorninish and had even restarted plans to build on the island when he was killed in 1980. Rawle went off to pursue his dream elsewhere and died in 2000. In 1972 the community finally disbanded after a fierce wind helped a dropped oil lamp to destroy their tents. Sid Rawle was more a dreamer than a drug crazy.' 'We're maybe a bit more bohemian than most parts of Ireland, but we had pirates living here long before the hippies. He didn't even have a boat: he'd hoist a white bedsheet up when he wanted Tommy, one of the local guys with a boat, to come and get him,' said Kelly, who said he doesn't think that the hippy era left a lasting legacy. Only Rawle himself came in for anything they needed – the welfare cheques, of course. People writing to him and sending money from all over the place. We thought the place would be flooded with drugs, but not a sign of them – flooded with letters is all. In town we just all thought the man must be making a lot of money out of it all, but then thought, fair game to him when he made it through that first winter. It didn't suit too many of the rich, pampered kids. 'You saw them waiting to go out, and some of then were back pretty quick, too. But as 30 hippies with their Carnaby Street costumes and teepees arrived, local residents were horrified, remembers Sam Kelly, 63, a retired farmer from nearby Westport. Rawle had great plans for livestock and lobster pots and vegetables. He was a New Ager, interested in self-suffiency, when he was summoned to the Beatle headquarters in 1970 and offered the use of Dorninish by Lennon to try to build his utopia. Rawle, the man the newspapers liked to call the 'King of the Hippies', was the founder of the Digger Action Movement. But at the height of Beatlemania Lennon wasn't ready to settle into his island retirement and so he offered it out, rent-free, to Sid Rawle. 'He was besotted with the place by all accounts,' said Crowley.

He shipped in a multicoloured caravan and took both his wives there. He bought Dorninish – twin green mounds linked by a natural causeway, lying just 15 minutes from the west coast of Ireland – in 1967 and got planning permission, although he never got as far as building. And indeed it is hard not to look at an island without the plans starting to kick in. 'You'll not be wanting to get off,' he assures visitors on the boat out. Some are owned by farmers, others by foreigners as a holiday home, one by the Maharishi Mahesh's followers.Įstate agent Andrew Crowley is selling two islands. Even as the property slump continues in the stagnant Irish economy, land is holding value, and so those who need to sell are doing so.Ĭlew Bay is island soup there are some 365 'drowned' drumlins, or elongated hills, out here if anyone's counting. It is one of a slew of islands on the market off the west coast of Ireland.

Dorinish island clew bay ireland