Cuan Mhuire, Bruree, Co. Limerick

The chimneystacks rise tall and rendered, the ridge is finished in terracotta tiles with crestings and finials, and no two windows quite match: square-headed sashes here, pointed arches there, a canted bay with stained glass elsewhere again. It is the kind of asymmetry that Gothic Revival architects cultivated deliberately, treating a house as a composition of picturesque parts rather than a single balanced facade. The front door alone rewards attention, its pointed arch opening framed by Corinthian style marble columns and a limestone transom carved with a running dog tooth motif, the sort of decorative flourish repeated on several of the window transoms around the building.

The house takes its architectural weight from more than the main block. A substantial range of outbuildings stands to the south, built in rubble sandstone with brick quoins and limestone dressings, its nine-bay north-east range announced by a gabled breakfront carrying an open-work limestone bellcote and a cast-iron weathervane. Carriage arches punctuate the gabled end bays, their surrounds rusticated in limestone, hinting at a working estate of some scale behind the domestic front. This was, for a time, the Irish home of the second Duke of Westminster, and later a residence of his daughter, who was married to the poet Stephen Vernon. That connection places the house briefly within the orbit of one of Britain's great landed fortunes, even as its everyday life continued as a working Irish country estate with its own yards, ranges, and outbuildings built to match the ambition of the main house.

Limestone steps lead to the principal entrance, and a further flight, with chamfered copings, runs up to the north-west elevation, evidence that the approach to the house was considered as carefully as its facades. The rendered walls carry a plinth course, and window surrounds throughout are chamfered rather than left plain, small details that, taken together, explain why the overall effect reads as considered design rather than accumulated addition. Even the garden steps are counted among the features that give the group its architectural interest, a reminder that in a house like this the setting was built to match the building.