Country house, Rathgoggan Middle, Co. Cork

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Country house, Rathgoggan Middle, Co. Cork

On the north-eastern edge of Charleville in County Cork, a vacant three-storey country house sits quietly at the corner of what was once the boundary of a far grander estate.

The house is an accumulation of decisions made at different times, and that layering is still legible in the fabric of the building. The entrance front on the north-west presents three bays to the world, but the fenestration is subtly off, the window openings in the added south-western bay sitting noticeably higher than those in the rest of the facade, a tell-tale sign of the high-ceilinged rooms behind them. The addition at the south-west end curves outward in a bow front, its large tripartite sash windows stacked on each floor, all covered under the same hipped roof as the main block. Random-rubble limestone construction lies beneath the rendered exterior, with ashlar quoins at the corners, and a round-headed door opening at the centre of the entrance front is framed by a pedimented wooden surround, the door itself set back and recessed.

The house stands adjacent to the site of a seventeenth-century predecessor, the original Charleville House, and the fields to the east and south are still enclosed by substantial stone walls that once formed part of that earlier demesne. It is possible the present building incorporates fabric from a structure associated with that earlier house, though nothing in the current building clearly dates to that period. By 1984, there was still an entrance lodge to the property, a modest single-storey, three-bay structure with pointed window openings and a steeply pitched corrugated iron roof. It no longer survives. Behind the main house, a long single-storey range of farm buildings extends to the rear, one section fitted out for horse stalls, and a walled garden occupies ground to the north-east. A two-storey kitchen addition is gable-ended to the north-east, with an attic window just visible above.

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Pete F
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