It is an odd detail, and it is the kind of detail that points to something more carefully considered beneath it. The architectural historian Maurice Craig judged this building, known today as Woodlands, to be the most interesting early eighteenth-century house in Ireland, which is a substantial claim for a two-storey structure that most people in the surrounding area have probably never thought much about.

The house was built in the early eighteenth century by the Reverend John Jackson, vicar of Santry, and sits on ground with a longer history of habitation. Before 1837 the area was recorded as Clinshogh, a variant of the older Clanshogh, and the Hearth Money Roll for County Dublin in 1664, a taxation record that listed households by the number of hearths they contained, notes a dwelling at Great Clanshogh with seven hearths, held by one Richard Foster. Seven hearths was a considerable number for the period, suggesting a substantial household. It is possible, though not certain, that Woodlands incorporated elements of that earlier structure when Jackson built his new house. What survives today is a square, brick building with four chimney stacks, a five-bay entrance front, a high basement, and the distinctive pyramidal roof topped by its gazebo. Inside, the plan is organised around a long vaulted corridor-hall that runs from front to back through the full depth of the house, a spatial arrangement that gives the interior an unusual formality for its scale.

Woodlands sits in Clonshagh, in north County Dublin, an area that has absorbed a great deal of suburban development over the past few decades. The house is not a public attraction and access is not guaranteed, so it is worth establishing the situation on the ground before making a specific journey. Those with an interest in early Georgian domestic architecture will find the exterior details reward close attention, particularly the relationship between the plain brick elevations and the more elaborate roof composition. The vaulted corridor-hall inside, if one has the opportunity to see it, is the feature that most distinguishes the building from its contemporaries.