Gortskagh House

Detached five-bay two-storey country house, built c. 1845, facing east, having two-bay end elevations with bowed front bays, entrance portico addition to front elevation, and single-storey lean-to extensions and attached outbuilding to rear. Skirt slate roof with overhanging timber sheeted eaves having carved timber brackets. Rendered chimneystack with sixteen decorative red clay chimneypots, and having cast-iron rainwater goods. Painted roughcast rendered walls with cut limestone plinth. Exposed snecked cut limestone walling to north end elevation, with dressed stone quoins and voussoirs. Painted smooth rendered walls to porch. Square-headed window openings with cut limestone sills and diminishing timber sliding sash windows, three-over-six pane to first floor and six-over-six pane to ground floor, middle panes being wider than side panes. Portico is distyle in antis, with Doric columns, frieze and cornice with stepped parapet, with round-headed door opening to house proper, with spoked fanlight and timber panelled door, having flanking four-over-six pane timber sliding sash sidelights with cut limestone sills. Cut limestone threshold.

This early Victorian country house retains many finely crafted features characteristic of country house design in the first half of the nineteenth century. The taste for a more horizontally proportioned elevation is illustrated by a lower pitched roof floating above an overhanging eaves. The sliding sash windows diminish in size, emphasizing the piano nobile, but more unusually display proportions resembling the margined sash arrangements popularised later in the century. The attractive and well-executed shallow bows to the side elevations are a characteristic feature of country houses in the Cork region. The house, outbuildings (20700217), walled garden and gate lodge form a pleasing grouping of demesne structures that add substantially to the architectural heritage of the area.