This early nineteenth-century glebe house in Glanworth, north County Cork, does exactly that, presenting a composed, symmetrical face to the north-west while quietly undermining its own formality with an addition whose roof has long since fallen in.

Glebe houses were the official residences of Church of Ireland clergy, built on land set aside, or glebed, for the parish minister's use. This one dates from the early 1800s and was recorded by the local historian J.R. Grove White in his survey of Cork monuments compiled between 1905 and 1925. The architecture is characteristic of its period and function: two storeys, a hipped roof with two chimneys placed slightly off-centre, and camber-headed sash windows to the front, their arched heads giving a restrained elegance that stops well short of grandeur. The rear elevation is more plainly utilitarian, fitted with large rectangular sash windows with glazing bars rather than the decorative detailing visible from the approach. A stone-built extension to the north-east has lost its roof entirely, and farm buildings survive to the south-west, reminders that a glebe was a working agricultural holding as much as a residence.