Country house, Kilcor, Co. Cork
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The country house at Kilcor in County Cork carries an oddly layered silhouette, one that rewards a second look.
What appears at first to be a relatively modest three-storey Georgian block turns out, on closer inspection, to be a building that has been substantially reworked and filled in around itself over time, with the original T-shaped plan gradually enclosed by additions that were designed to match in spirit if not entirely in detail.
The original structure was tall and slim, three bays wide and three storeys high, with a main block only one bay deep and a central projection running to the rear. The southern entrance front presents five bays in total, with three of those arranged in a central angular bow, the whole thing topped with an embattled parapet, that is, a crenellated wall of the kind more commonly associated with castles, here applied as a decorative flourish in the Gothic Revival manner. Two separate additions, both dating to around 1840 or slightly before, were then built into the two angles of the original T-plan, effectively squaring off the footprint. The north-western addition also carries battlements, keeping stylistic continuity with the original front. The north-eastern addition takes a different approach, with a hipped roof and tripartite Wyatt windows to the rear; a Wyatt window is a large central sash flanked by two narrower fixed lights, a arrangement fashionable in late Georgian and Regency building. A two-storey porch was added to the front at a later date still. To the north of the house, farm buildings incorporate the remains of an earlier castle on the site, suggesting that the country house sits within a much older pattern of occupation and landholding.
