Survey Data
Reg No
13002297
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Social
Original Use
House
In Use As
House
Date
1895 - 1900
Coordinates
213495, 275404
Date Recorded
01/09/2005
Date Updated
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Description
Terraced two-bay two-storey gable-fronted local authority house, built 1898, with box bay window to ground floor and overhanging upper floor supported on two large limestone corbels. One of a terrace of twenty (see 13008013 for rest of terrace). Now in use as a private house. Pitched slate roof with (shared) diagonally placed red brick chimneystack with blue brick course and cap, timber bargeboards to gable and cast-iron rainwater goods. Painted roughcast rendered walls to upper floor, hammer finished coursed limestone construction to the ground floor. Square-headed window openings with multi-light timber frame casement windows and painted sills. Square-headed doorway to the south end of the front elevation (east) with timber battened door and overlight with vertical glazing bars. Road-fronted to the west side of St. Mel’s Road and to the east of Longford Town centre.
Appraisal
This attractive and well-built house is the best surviving example along a uniform terrace of twenty local authority houses (see 13008013). It retains much of its original character, fabric and a form derived from the Arts and Crafts movement. This widely influential late-nineteenth century movement belonged to a period when the domination of historical styles was being questioned and many architects were looking for inspiration to vernacular buildings of the countryside, in this case the English countryside. It was built by the Longford Town Commissioners and dates to a period when a great many houses of this type were built in Ireland following the passing of the various Land and Labourers’ Acts (c. 1883 - 1921) by the British Parliament in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, and they are a feature of the outskirts of many of the larger Irish towns. The vast majority of these buildings are now heavily altered, as is the case along this terrace, making this building an important survival. This terrace is among the most attractive examples of its type in north Leinster and is an integral element of the architectural heritage of County Longford. This terrace was reputedly built using masonry taken from the old jail/prison on Battery Road, Longford Town. These buildings may have been built to designs by William Richard Gleave (1868 – 1933), an English architect who won a competition (there were sixty-seven entries) to design forty artisans’ cottages for the Earl of Longford 1896 - 7.