Country house, Kilcondy, Co. Cork

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Country house, Kilcondy, Co. Cork

In the townland of Kilcondy in mid Cork, a two-storey Georgian house has been left to its own devices, its front door framed by engaged Ionic columns, the entablature above them still carrying a carved family crest.

The columns support a classical entablature, that horizontal band of moulded stonework typically used to crown a colonnade, and the whole assembly sits around what would once have been a fairly formal entrance. It is an unusually composed doorway for a building that has since been abandoned.

The house dates to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, a period when landed families across Munster were rebuilding or constructing new residences in the prevailing neoclassical taste. The architecture here is disciplined rather than showy. The northeast-facing front elevation is three bays wide, meaning it has three vertical divisions of windows, and a deep two-storey bow projection pushes outward from the southeastern end, a curved feature that would have introduced light and variety to the principal rooms within. The southeast side carries a matching bow at its far end, suggesting the plan was carefully considered from multiple angles. On the northwest side, a tall round-headed window marks the staircase, a signature gesture in houses of this period where the stairwell was lit by a single generous opening. The rear elevation, facing southwest over what appears to have been a basement storey, extends to four bays, giving that face of the building a slightly broader, more utilitarian character than the composed northeast front. Whose crest once greeted visitors at the door is not recorded, though it implies a family with pretensions to heraldic identity, which was hardly unusual among Cork's Protestant gentry in this era.

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