Mount Ievers Court, Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare

At Mount Ievers Court, the south front is built of red brick while the north front is faced entirely in cut limestone, as though two different architects had been given the same footprint and told to work independently. Both fronts share the same careful vocabulary of quoins, string courses and moulded architraves, so the effect is not one of mismatch but of deliberate contrast, a house that presents a different material identity depending on which direction you approach it from.

The building dates to 1733-7 and is attributed to the architect John Rothery, who died in 1736, meaning he did not live to see the house completed. It rises seven bays wide and three storeys over a raised basement, a plan that pushes the main living floors up and away from ground damp while giving the basement its own row of segmental-arched openings, distinct from the square-headed windows above. Those upper windows retain their timber sliding sashes with notably thick glazing bars, a detail of early Georgian joinery that later fashions would pare down to something thinner and lighter. Both the north and south fronts are given proper architectural doorcases, carved in limestone with pilasters and entablatures framing timber panelled doors, and the south entrance is reached by a flight of limestone steps, suggesting this was treated as an approach worth making a small ceremony of.

The house did not stand alone. A detached outbuilding of eight bays, single storey, includes an integral carriage arch with a round head and moulded surround, the kind of structure that would have handled coaches, stores and estate work away from the main block. The boundary walls are built of rubble stone but punctuated by red brick piers finished with ball finials, and set into them are pedimented round-headed niches along with a bellcote, a small roofed housing for a bell. Taken together, the brick and limestone fronts, the thick-barred sash windows, and the ornamented walling around the yard describe a house built with unusual attention to formal detail on every side, not only the one meant to be seen first.