Forge Cottage in Ballygow

Detached four-bay single-storey lobby entry thatched house with dormer attic, post-1841; extant 1902. Extensively renovated, pre-1990, with single-bay single-storey gabled projecting porch added. Hipped roof off-centred on pitched (gabled) roof to porch with replacement iron mesh-covered oat thatch, pre-1990, paired exposed bamboo stretchers to ridge having exposed steel scallops with rope twist ridge to porch above paired exposed hazel lattice[?] stretchers having exposed scallops, replacement yellow brick Running bond dwarf chimney stack, pre-1990, having stringcourse below capping supporting pots, timber bargeboards to gable to porch, and exposed bamboo stretchers to eaves having exposed steel scallops. Limewashed lime rendered battered walls over mud wall construction on random rubble stone base with limewashed rendered walls to porch. Square-headed window openings with cut-stone sills, and replacement timber casement windows, pre-1990, replacing two-over-two timber sash windows. Square-headed door opening with concrete threshold, and tongue-and-groove timber panelled door. Set back from road in own grounds [OS].

A house of modest size recognised as an interesting component of the nineteenth-century vernacular legacy of south County Wexford by such attributes as the rectilinear lobby entry plan form focused on an expressed, albeit later porch, the construction in unrefined local materials including sections of "daub" or mud defined by a pronounced battered profile, and the high pitched roof retaining a traditional oat thatch finish. However, while the elementary form and massing prevail together with quantities of the original fabric, the introduction of replacement fittings to the openings has not had a beneficial impact on the external expression or integrity of the house.