house

Detached five-bay two-storey house/post office, built c.1830, having a timber shopfront attached to the west end, c.1900. Pitched slate roof with three rendered chimneystacks and uPVC rainwater goods. Wet dash rendered walls over smooth rendered plinth and raised rendered block quoins to the corners. Square-headed window openings with cut stone sills and rendered reveals having one-over-one pane timber sash windows. Square-headed door opening with rendered jambs, plain glass overlight and replacement glazed timber door. Limestone step to road. Square-headed window opening to shopfront having rendered stallriser with three fixed pane windows with timber mullions over. Square-headed door opening to the west side of shopfront having plain glass overlight and original timber double doors. Shopfront to east end comprising pilasters (with inset panels) with console brackets over supporting timber fascia having moulded timber cornice over with dentil blocks. Simple script to fascia reading ‘’HORSELEAP POST OFFICE’. Road fronted to the south of the main Dublin to Galway road.

A charming, if simple, two-storey building of early-nineteenth date, which retains much of its early character, form and fabric, including timber sliding sash windows. Of particular note is very good quality and finely-detailed traditional timber shopfront to the west end, which is an excellent example of its type and is an increasingly rare survival. This post office is located adjacent to the former late eighteenth-century mail coach road between Dublin and Galway and may be a very early example of a provincial post office, which started to be built in Ireland from the 1830s. The existing shopfront is probably of late nineteenth-century date and is based on a simplification of the classical formula of columns and entablature. This appealing structure is a notable feature along the main Dublin to Galway road and is a worthy addition to the built heritage of Westmeath.