Teach Mhuire

Detached three-bay single-storey Tudor Revival curate's house with half-dormer attic, c.1875. Renovated to accommodate commercial use. Pitched roof (gablets to half-dormer attic windows) with replacement artificial slate, clay ridge tiles, replacement cement rendered chimney stacks, decorative timber bargeboards, and cast-iron rainwater goods on slightly overhanging eaves. Broken coursed rock-faced squared limestone walls. Square-headed window openings with cut-granite flush chamfered sills, cut-granite block-and-start surrounds incorporating lintels, and replacement timber casement windows. Tudor-headed door opening with two cut-limestone steps, cut-granite block-and-start surround, and replacement timber panelled door having overlight. Set back from road in own grounds with landscaped forecourt having wrought iron railings to perimeter on cut-granite plinth, cut-granite piers having chamfered corners, and wrought iron gate.

A compact house of picturesque appearance on account of the presence of distinctive attributes producing a Tudor Revival-style theme including profiled openings together with decorative timber joinery details, and so on. The juxtaposition of limestone with granite dressings in the construction produces a suitably austere medieval quality contributing to the diversity of the streetscape: the house is further distinguished by the position set back from the line of the road with an enclosed forecourt. Having been reasonably well maintained with a quantity of the original fabric surviving the renovation programme undertaken in the course of adapting the site to an alternative purpose the house remains an important element of the architectural heritage enhancing the aesthetic value of the townscape. The house remains of additional importance for the original intended use as an ecclesiastical residence reputedly for the Catholic curacy making the location precisely opposite the Church of Ireland church (12310009/KK-20-10-09) peculiarly interesting.