Curraheen House, Cappagh, Co. Limerick

It is an unshowy house, roughcast and rendered, two storeys over five bays, yet it carries its age plainly in that one structural habit, and in the fanlight and sidelights that frame the front door, small classical flourishes that would not have looked out of place on a townhouse but here sit on a working rural building.

The house was built around 1770 by the Stephenson family, and much of its original form survives despite later additions pulling at its edges. To the rear, a two-bay return extends north, and onto that a bowed addition was grafted, its curved wall topped with its own hipped roof, quite different in character from the strict rectangularity of the main block. Further single-storey and part-storey extensions trail off the back, flat-roofed and clearly later, giving the building an accumulated, layered footprint typical of houses that stayed in continuous use and were adapted rather than replaced. The windows tell a similar story of gradual change: the principal sash windows are timber, six-over-six paned, with painted stone sills and, on the ground floor, cast-iron spear-headed guards protecting them, while the windows in the return and rear have been replaced with uPVC, a plainer, practical swap that leaves the older joinery at the front looking all the more deliberate by contrast. The front door itself, round-headed with a glazed overlight and flanked by two-over-two sash windows on limestone sills, has gained a red brick surround at some later date, another small patch in the building's long habit of repair.

Beyond the house, a nine-bay single-storey outbuilding stands to the east, now roofless, its roughcast render laid over rubble limestone walls, with square window openings and timber half-doors still fitted into some of the bays. This kind of long, low range was the standard form for stables, byres or storage on a farm of this size, each bay serving a separate function under one continuous roof. A pair of square rendered piers with recessed panels marks the entrance nearby, fitted with double-leaf metal gates that are clearly modern replacements, standing in for whatever ironwork or timber gates would have hung there when the house was new.