Country house, Gortnaboul, Co. Kerry

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Country house, Gortnaboul, Co. Kerry

A roofless shell sitting in open pasture about two hundred metres west of Kilgarvan, this two-storey house has been quietly collapsing for long enough that the vegetation has largely swallowed it.

What makes it worth a second look is its T-shaped plan, an arrangement that was less common in rural Kerry than the straightforward rectangular farmhouse but that gave a household considerably more internal flexibility, with a two-storey gabled projection running back from the centre of the rear wall, its own ground-floor doorway and window still visible in the east face.

The house was built from random rubble, which simply means locally gathered stone laid without careful dressing or coursing, though whoever commissioned it took the trouble to render the front elevation, giving the south-facing facade a smoother, more considered appearance. That front presents three bays, with a central rectangular doorway flanked by rectangular window openings, a modest but recognisable assertion of symmetry. A single chimney survives off-centre to the left, and rubble on the interior suggests a matching chimney once stood to the right. The rear of the building now shows no window or door openings at all from the outside, whether because they have been blocked by fallen material or were simply never cut through. A small outhouse is built directly against the west end of the front elevation, and a second, more heavily overgrown outhouse sits to the northeast of the main structure.

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Pete F
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