Meelick House, Meelick, Co. Clare

Giant pilasters, flattened columns that rise through more than one storey rather than being confined to a single level, were normally reserved for grander architectural statements. Their appearance here, on an otherwise restrained early nineteenth century farmhouse, suggests an owner with ambitions slightly beyond the ordinary, or at least an architect keen to borrow the visual language of a bigger house for a smaller one.

The house dates from around 1820, a period when a good deal of rural Irish building followed a fairly standard formula: hipped slate roof, rendered chimneystacks, sash windows sliding in timber frames. Meelick House keeps to that pattern in most respects, but the entrance marks it out further. The limestone doorcase, with its pilasters flanking a timber panelled door and an overlight beneath a formal entablature, is a more considered piece of design than the plain window openings elsewhere on the front would suggest. Overlights, the glazed panels set above a door to let light into the hallway, were common enough in houses of this era, but here the whole surround has been given real weight and finish, as though the doorway alone were meant to carry the building's claim to status. To one side of the house stands an L-plan outbuilding of rubble stone, single storey and single bay, its gable turned to face the site rather than tucked discreetly behind; a working structure, built plainly, in contrast to the main block's more self-conscious front.

The approach to the site still carries some of its original formality. Dressed stone gate piers mark the entrance, paired with a stone stile set into the boundary, a small but telling detail: someone here wanted pedestrians to have their own way in, separate from whatever carriage or cart traffic used the main gate. Little details like the stile are easy to miss against the more obvious presence of the pilastered front, but they round out the picture of a house built to manage arrival and impression as carefully as it managed comfort within.