Ashton, house in County Limerick (21512031)

Semi-detached two-bay three-storey gable-fronted red brick house, built c. 1900, facing south with a two-storey three-sided canted bay window to front elevation, and elaborate timber-framed entrance porch. Two-bay two-storey gabled return to rear shared with neighbouring house prolonged by lean-to. Pitched slate roof hipped to east with intersecting roof adjoining neighbouring house. Red brick chimneystacks to party walls and return with stepped red brick cornice. Cast-iron and uPVC rainwater goods. Red brick walls laid in English garden wall bond with moulded red brick eaves throughout. Roughcast rendered rear and return elevations. Terracotta weather hanging laid in fishscale courses to gable of façade. Square-headed window openings with continuous limestone ashlar lintel courses, red brick reveals, limestone sills with sill course to bays. One-over-one timber sash windows to front elevation with ogee horns and ten-paned overlight to upper sash. One-over-one and two-over-two timber sash windows to rear elevation each with ogee horns. Three-sided canted bay window to return with rendered apron. Front door porch, separated from neighbouring porch by panelled timber screen, with elaborate timber uprights supporting lean-to roof, with timber balustrade and open fretwork bargeboard and encaustic tile porch platform. Segmental-arched door opening with moulded red brick arch, reveals, and limestone threshold step. Tripartite timber doorcase with chamfered detailing, comprising sidelights over panelled timber bases, tripartite overlight. Flat-panelled timber door leaf. Large front and rear site enclosed to front by rendered plinth wall supporting wrought-iron railings with end piers, to one side supporting wrought-iron pedestrian gate, all with cast-iron finials. Front site path to front door. Rendered and rubble limestone boundary walls to east enclosing front site from shared rear site access lane, with additional pedestrian gate to front door and wrought-iron gates closing off lane from road. Immediate rear site enclosed by rendered boundary wall with plank timber pedestrian gates.

This house forms one of two with a shared composition paired front gable elevation and timber-framed front door porch. Like many late Victorian and Edwardian houses the design incorporates a multitude of architectural detailing. Very much intact retaining original sash windows, door leaf, sidelights and overlight. This house forms part of the turn of the twentieth-century development of Landsdown Villas. The development, by Clifford Smith, is evidence of the middle class wealth in the City at the time.