officer's house

Detached irregular-plan eight-bay single-storey officer's house, built 1908, with recessed central block. Now vacant. Flat rendered roof with red brick chimneystack. Painted rendered walls with plinth, red-brick rounded platband, block-and-start quoins and parapets. Square-headed openings with red brick block-and-start surrounds and concrete sills. Square-headed door openings with red brick block-and-start surrounds. Roughcast rendered boundary walls with piers to front (south).

This building is typical of a British officer's house, built in the early twentieth century. It is very distinctive when compared with the vernacular-style dwellings in the area. Bere Island was recognized as being of great strategic importance following an attempted French invasion of Ireland in 1796. The British built four Martello Towers and a signal tower on the island, as part of a chain of defence along the coast, in anticipation of any further attempts. In 1898 the east end of the island was compulsory purchased by the War Department and fortifications were built to protect British Dreadnoughts when they were in port. Accommodation for officers and men, along with store houses and other ancillary buildings were also constructed at this time. Additional works were undertaken in the first part of the twentieth century. Under the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, the deep island port at Bere Island, along with those at Cobh and Lough Swilly remained in British control until 1938.