Post office, Rathgoggan Middle, Co. Cork

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Post office, Rathgoggan Middle, Co. Cork

On the old Limerick road through Charleville, a two-storey terraced house carries a keystone above its front door inscribed with the initials "J.

B." and the year 1825. That carved date, accompanied by a small rosette, is the most legible clue that this building once served a civic function well beyond the domestic one it now performs. By the time the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1842, the building was already named "Post Office" on their six-inch sheets, suggesting it had been in that role for some years and was well established enough to warrant the designation on a national survey.

The front elevation faces east across three bays, with plate glass sash windows and a round-headed door opening framed by Doric pillars supporting a moulded fanlight surround. In architectural terms, the Doric order is the plainest of the classical column styles, associated with restrained civic dignity rather than ornament, which suits a building that would have been a small but serious piece of local infrastructure. The coursed ashlar chimney stack at the centre, ashlar being finely cut and dressed stone laid in regular courses, is partially of brick, a practical mix common in early nineteenth-century provincial construction. A stone wall with limestone piers encloses the front garden, separating the building from the street in a way that gives it a degree of formality that most of its neighbours lack. A similar house stands immediately to the south, of comparable scale but with brick chimneys on the gables rather than the central stack, hinting at slightly different build dates or builders.

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