Riversdale House, Kilteasheen, Co. Roscommon

The site itself does some of the work here, set on rising ground above Lough Key, with the land dropping behind the building in a way that the front elevation simply does not let on.

The house dates from around 1840 and follows a T-shaped plan, three bays wide, single storey over basement, under a hipped slate roof with rendered chimneystacks and paired timber eaves brackets. Its classical restraint comes largely from the stonework: rendered walls are trimmed with tooled limestone quoins and a plinth course, and the front and side elevations carry limestone dressings that give the house a crisper, more formal presence than a rendered building might otherwise have. A pedimented entrance porch was added later, its segmental-headed doorway fitted with a timber panelled door, sidelights and a fanlight, all still intact, reached by a short flight of granite steps. Canted oriel windows on the north and south fronts, their timber sashes set on stone sills, break up the elevations and would have thrown light into rooms on either side of the house. To the east, stone outbuildings with timber battened doors extend the domestic complex beyond the main block. The approach to the house is marked by an entrance of some ambition for what is otherwise a fairly restrained building: square-profile gate piers made by Sheridan of Dublin, paired with elaborate wrought and cast-iron railings and gates, signal the driveway before the house itself comes into view.

Anyone looking at Riversdale House is really looking at two buildings at once, the deceptively compact front and the taller rear, and it rewards a slow circuit rather than a single glance from the avenue. The ironwork at the entrance, cast by a named Dublin maker rather than a generic local smith, is worth pausing over in its own right, as is the porch, where the original fanlight and sidelights have survived rather than being replaced with something plainer.