Knockranny House, Knockranny, Co. Roscommon

At this abandoned country house above Lough Meelagh, the western end of the building curves outward in a full bow, rising two storeys and lit by windows that run its whole height, while a canted bay juts from the northern elevation and a half bow answers it on the south side, where a side return connects to the main block. The effect, even in dereliction, is of a house that was built to be looked at from several directions at once, its silhouette softened by curves rather than the flat gable ends more usual in houses of its period and region.

The house dates to around 1820, a period when Irish landed families were experimenting with the picturesque possibilities of Regency design, favouring bows, bays and canted projections over the plainer Georgian box. Here that experimentation shows in the ruled-and-lined render applied over random coursed stone, in the timber sash and Wyatt windows (a triple-light arrangement named for the English architect family who popularised it) set on limestone sills, and in the oversailing eaves with their supporting brackets, a detail that gives the roofline a slightly heavier, more sculptural presence than a plain eave would. Some interior shutters and a timber panelled door with sidelights and an overlight survive, hinting at the level of finish once applied throughout. The working life of the estate is legible in what surrounds the house: a farmyard set at a lower level to the east, its L-plan range of outbuildings built in sandstone and limestone with integral carriage arches allowing vehicles to pass straight through the yard, and a gate lodge further east again, a modest single-storey building with pointed-arched windows and limewashed walls, marking the entrance where wrought-iron gates still hang from a rendered pier.

Nothing here has been restored or reoccupied. House, farmyard and gate lodge stand together as a single unit, the grander architectural ambitions of the main block set against the plainer, functional stone of the yard buildings, and the whole group left to weather above the lake it was positioned to overlook.