Castletown House, Cottlestown, Co. Sligo

The building itself reads as a puzzle for anyone paying attention to the stonework: a later block grafted onto an existing eighteenth century structure, the join visible to those who know to look for it. What ties the whole composition together, oddly, is not the main house at all but the rubble stone farmyard sitting to its west, workmanlike and unpretentious, holding its own against the more studied formality of the facade.

The house as it now stands dates to around 1820, a rendered double-pile block, four bays wide, two storeys over a basement, with forward-projecting pedimented end bays giving the front elevation its rhythm and a matching breakfront doing similar work on the east side. The real craftsmanship shows itself in the entrance: an ashlar limestone doorcase set beneath a wide elliptical arch, its voussoirs (the wedge-shaped stones that make up the arch) carried on columns of an unusual profile, framing a panelled timber door. Above it spreads a sunburst fanlight, splendidly wide and multi-paned, flanked by sidelights of the same glazing pattern, the whole arrangement lifted on ashlar steps. The windows tell their own story of survival; the south and east elevations retain their original mullioned-and-transomed sashes with small panes, a fenestration pattern that has not been swapped out for the plainer six-over-six sashes found on the north and west sides, where later alteration or simple practicality seems to have won out. Chimneystacks in corbelled ashlar and a pitched slate roof with plain clay ridge tiles complete a fairly restrained upper storey, in contrast with the ornament concentrated at ground level around the door.

The approach is by driveway from the southwest, through a landscaped garden set with mature trees, the derelict castle and corn mill visible to the northwest as the drive curves in. Visitors with an eye for stonework should slow down at the doorcase before anything else; the fanlight and flanking columns reward a close look, and the contrast between the finely dressed masonry of the main block and the rougher rubble stone of the farmyard to the west is easiest to appreciate on foot, moving between the two.