Cornaher House, Newtownlow, Co. Westmeath

It is a small architectural flourish, but an effective one, and it has survived largely intact despite alterations over the following two centuries. The doorcase beneath, cut limestone with a fanlight overhead, remains one of the more refined details on a building that otherwise reads as a solid, unfussy example of its period.

The house was built as a home for the Vignoles family, minor gentry whose name recurs in the parish records of this part of south Westmeath. A Rev. John Vignoles, who had previously served as a major in the British Army, lived here until his death in 1819, not long after the house is thought to have been completed. By 1837 the property had passed to Rev. Chas. Vignoles, rector of the nearby Newtown Church of Ireland church to the northwest. The pattern, a clergyman's residence tied closely to a local parish living, was common enough in Protestant landholding families of the period, and it places the house within a small network of rectories, churches and demesnes that once structured this stretch of countryside. The pebbledashed walls and cut stone quoins, the natural slate roofs, hipped over the bows and pitched elsewhere, and the six-over-six and six-over-three pane sash windows all belong to this original build, even if some fabric has been replaced over time.

The house sits well back from the road, elevated, with views opening out to the south across grounds that still carry the maturity of tree planting laid down when the Vignoles family were in residence. A cluster of outbuildings and more recent farm structures stands to the east, a working reminder that this was never simply an ornamental residence but the centre of an agricultural holding. The building now operates as a hotel and guest house, which has brought its own changes, most visibly a replacement door set into the limestone surround on the northwest elevation, where a spider's web fanlight, a delicate radiating pattern of glazing bars, still survives over a square-headed doorway. The main entrance gates lie to the west, marking the original approach into grounds that were clearly designed to be seen from a distance before they were entered.