Market-house, Rathgoggan Middle, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Market Places

Market-house, Rathgoggan Middle, Co. Cork

At the corner of Main Street and Broad Street in Charleville, a date carved into the keystone of a limestone arcade quietly anchors the building to a specific moment: 1769.

The keystone sits at the centre of a three-bay semicircular arcade on the ground floor, one of those small gestures of civic pride that Georgian builders liked to leave behind. Above it, the first floor carries three flat-arched windows with sash glazing, and the whole facade is topped by a wide floating pediment set against a hipped roof behind a parapet wall. It is a composed, deliberate piece of work, the kind of building that was meant to signal order and commerce in equal measure.

Market houses of this type were a common feature of planned Irish towns in the eighteenth century, serving as the physical centre of local trade and administration. They typically combined open ground-floor arcading, where goods could be displayed and exchanged in covered conditions, with more formal upper-floor space used for meetings, courts, or civic business. This example in Charleville follows that pattern closely. The rear of the building was used as a court house, while the ground floor arcade was converted to retail use at some later point. The building is constructed in coursed limestone ashlar, a dressed and carefully laid stonework that gave civic buildings of the period their sense of solidity and permanence. A string course, a projecting horizontal band of stone running at roughly one metre in height, rises over the arches on the front elevation and ties the composition together. The south elevation repeats the treatment of the front, with its own arcade and sash window, while the north side is absorbed into an adjacent building.

The rear of the structure has accumulated additions over time, including a central lean-to extension and flanking two-storey hipped wings, with an external door reached by steps and an iron railing on the southern addition. These layers of alteration are part of what makes the building legible as a working structure rather than a monument, one that has kept earning its place on the street corner for more than two and a half centuries.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Market-house, Rathgoggan Middle, Co. Cork. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement