John Lennon's Irish island for sale
'Beatles Island,' where Lennon envisioned building a vacation home, is offered for about $387,000 by the farmers who bought it from his widow in 1984.
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Back in 1967, when the idea of the Beatles or any of their fans reaching retirement age seemed too far in the future to fathom, John Lennon bought a 19-acre island off the coast of Ireland for about $2,700.
After Lennon's tragic shooting death in 1980, his widow, Yoko Ono, sold the island where the two had dreamed of living when they were 64 and beyond. The selling price was about 30,000 pounds, about $48,000, which Ono donated to an Irish orphanage.
Twenty-eight years later, the farmers who bought the island from Ono are offering it for sale, saying they are getting older themselves and no longer want to tend their sheep there. Asking price is 300,000 euros, about $387,000.
"The island isn't being used as much as it should be, and they were never going to build on it," listing agent Andrew Crowley of Sherry FitzGerald Crowley told Bloomberg. "The owners are getting on in years, and maintaining their livestock at such a distance isn’t practicable anymore."
The island, which is actually two small islands joined by a walkway, was last regularly inhabited in the 1880s by marine pilots. The foundations of some of their stone homes are still there. You can read a lengthy history of Lennon and the place sometimes called "Beatles Island" at the fan club website Beatles Ireland.
In the early 1970s, during Lennon's ownership, about 25 hippies lived in a commune on the island. The were led by Sid Rawle, known in Britain as "the king of the hippies." They lived in tents and grew some of their own food.
The island, one of about 365 in Clew Bay in County Mayo off the west coast of Ireland, has been on the market since July with no takers. Ireland has suffered a real-estate bust of its own, with the average price of a home down 53% from the peak in 2007, Bloomberg reported.
About a year before he died, Lennon looked into reviving his plans to build a home on the island.
Back in 1971, a writer for Rolling Stone magazine asked the singer what kind of life he envisioned for himself and Ono after he turned 64, which would have happened in 2004. He replied:
"I hope we're a nice old couple living off the coast of Ireland or something like that — looking out at our scrapbook of madness."
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About Teresa Mears
Teresa Mears is a veteran journalist who has been interested in houses since her father took her to tax auctions to carry the cash at age 10. A former editor of The Miami Herald's Home & Design section, she lives in South Florida where, in addition to writing about real estate, she publishes Miami on the Cheap to help her neighbors adjust to the loss of 60% of their property value.
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