House - 17th century, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

House

House – 17th century, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

On Watergate Street in Fethard, a three-storey building now occupied at ground level by the Castle Inn carries within its fabric a series of quiet puzzles: internal partitions reportedly constructed not from plaster or masonry but from trellises of light timber packed with grain, a rear projection that turns out to be a hollow shell, and a recess in a connecting wall wide enough to have once held a well.

An inscribed stone was found at the base of that recess, though what it said or where it ended up is not recorded.

The building sits directly beside Fethard Castle on its northern side, and its age places it in a town that was already medieval before it was built. It appears on the Grace map of 1708, rendered in the stylised manner typical of early cartography, as a modest two-storey house with a central chimney. That original form is still readable in the north gable, where the pitch of an earlier, steeper roof remains visible in the masonry. The rear projection, measuring roughly 5.3 metres, mirrors a similar chimney projection found at another medieval structure just south of the castle, suggesting that whoever built this house was working within an established local pattern, or perhaps extending an older one. In 2005 and 2006, the building was substantially altered: the second floor was raised at eaves level, the windows on that floor were heightened to match, and the roof was replaced. The current three-storey profile is largely a product of that intervention rather than the original construction.

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