Gorey Union Workhouse

Remains of Union Workhouse complex, built 1840-1; opened 1842, including: Detached single-bay (single-bay deep) single-storey gable-fronted "cottage" with half-dormer attic on an L-shaped plan with single-bay single-storey flush porch. Occupied, 1911. Vacated, 1919. "Restored", ----, to accommodate continued private residential use. Pitched (gable-fronted) slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles, decorative timber bargeboards to gables on timber purlins, and no rainwater goods surviving on timber eaves boards on box eaves. Part repointed coursed rubble stone walls with red brick flush quoins to corners. Square-headed window openings with cut-granite sills, and red brick block-and-start surrounds having chamfered reveals framing replacement timber casement windows. Set back from road in landscaped grounds.

A "cottage" surviving as an important relic of the Gorey Union Workhouse complex erected for the Gorey Poor Law Union (declared 1839) to a standardised design signed by George Wilkinson (1814-90), Architect to the Poor Law Commissioners in Ireland (appointed 1839; retired 1855), with the architectural value of the composition confirmed by such attributes as the compact plan form; the construction in an ochre-coloured fieldstone offset by red brick dressings producing an eye-catching palette; the uniform or near-uniform proportions of the openings on each floor; and the decorative timber work embellishing the roofline. Having been well maintained, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with quantities of the original or sympathetically replicated fabric, thus upholding the character or integrity of a "cottage" forming part of a neat self-contained group alongside an adjacent "Front Block" (see 15701132) with the resulting ensemble making a pleasing visual statement in a sylvan street scene.