Coorheen House, Curheen, Co. Galway

It was raised as a dower house, the term for a residence set aside for a widowed woman of a landed family once her son inherited the main estate; a polite architectural solution to the awkwardness of two generations sharing one roof. That original purpose has left it with a curious in-between status: substantial enough to feel important, but never quite the principal seat it now serves as, having been repurposed as a bishop's residence.

The house dates from around 1875 and presents a compact, confident face to the world: three bays wide, two storeys over a basement, with full-height projecting bays flanking a single-storey colonnaded veranda. That veranda does most of the talking. Its square-plan limestone columns and pilasters, moulded plinths and capitals, and entablature above give the entrance a classical formality out of proportion to the house's modest footprint, approached by a flight of cut limestone steps between low parapets. Rubble limestone walls, tooled at sill and plinth level, are handled with more restraint on the side elevations, where yellow brick block-and-start surrounds frame the windows instead of dressed stone, a cost-conscious variation typical of the period. To the north stands a yard of outbuildings, one range seven bays long and two storeys, with segmental carriage arches for the passage of horses and carts, one arch since converted into a doorway and window. A second, single-storey range faces it across the yard, its roof timbers left exposed at the ends beneath the slates. Both are built with the same coursed limestone but pared down further, refined rather than showy, a deliberate step below the house in the visual hierarchy that country estates liked to maintain. Entry to the yard is marked by ashlar limestone piers, while a separate, more theatrical wrought-iron gate on cast-iron piers stands to the north-west of the house itself, its decorative ironwork answering the Arts and Crafts style of a gate lodge nearby, a stylistic contrast the classical house and its plain, sensible outbuildings do not attempt to match, and do not need to.