Teach Dhoire Fhíonáin [Derrynane House], Darrynane More, Co. Kerry

Battlemented parapets sit above slate-hung walls, a private chapel opens off one wing with lancet windows more suited to a church than a home, and lion masks stare out from the gables of the reception rooms. Nothing about the exterior settles into one clean style, because the building never stopped changing hands, roles, or shapes across two centuries.

The core dates to around 1720, a modest two-storey block with a gabled three-storey end bay to the west. It was Daniel O'Connell, the nineteenth-century political leader known for his campaign for Catholic emancipation, who transformed the place into the sprawling house visible today. Around 1825 the building was renovated and extended substantially, gaining a new wing, a linking range with a half-dormer attic, and a further block to the east that closed the south courtyard into a proper quadrangle, its slate-hung walls finished with a stepped battlemented parapet for effect rather than defence. A more personal addition followed in 1844, when a double-height private chapel was built onto the north-east corner, a single cell lit by narrow lancet openings and a tripartite window in its east gable, the kind of space a devout household would have kept for its own prayers rather than public worship. A service range was attached to the north, and the working, unglamorous side of the house has kept much of its early character even as the family quarters around it were dressed up. The house was extended again in the later twentieth century, adding a further range to the east and completing a second courtyard to the north, by which time Derrynane had already become a museum.

Around the house, older outbuildings survive in varying states. A single-storey rubble stone building from about 1825 still stands with its segmental-headed carriage arch, the kind of wide, flattened opening designed to let carts and horses through, and a lean-to bay attached to one side. A larger two-storey stone outbuilding of the same period has fared worse and is now ruinous. A gateway of roughcast piers and cast-iron gates from the same building campaign marks an approach to the north-west, its gable topped with a bell, a small but deliberate touch on what was otherwise a working entrance to the estate.