Survey Data
Reg No
40837025
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Social
Original Use
House
In Use As
House
Date
1890 - 1910
Coordinates
181737, 393835
Date Recorded
30/01/2015
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached three-bay single-storey house with attic level, built c. 1900, having central projecting gable-fronted porch to the front (south-east), and extension to the rear (north-west). Possibly originally built as a social\local authority house. Steeply pitched natural slate roof with overhanging eaves, cast-iron rainwater goods, and with central rendered chimneystack. Rubble stone walls, originally rendered, with flush roughly squared rubble stone quoins to the corners. Roughcast rendered walls to porch over smooth rendered plinth course. Square-headed window openings with red brick lintels, smooth rendered surrounds, stone sills (?), and with two-over-two pane timber sliding sash windows. Square-headed window openings to porch with remains of one-over-one pane timber sliding sash windows. Square-headed doorway to the front face of porch (south-east) having replacement glazed timber door with overlight. Set back from road in own grounds in the rural countryside to the south-west of the centre of Glenties. Garden to site; single-bay single-storey garage, c. 1950, to the south-west. Pedestrian gateway to the south-east having cast-iron gate posts and hooped wrought-iron gate. Hedging to road-frontage to the south-east.
Appraisal
This simple but appealing house, dating to the turn of the twentieth century, retains its original form and character. Its integrity is enhanced by the retention of its original fittings to the window openings and the attractive steeply pitched natural slate roof. The use of red brick for the lintels to the openings is a characteristic feature of many late nineteenth and early twentieth-century buildings throughout Ireland. Its form and appearance suggests that it may have been originally built by the relevant local authority, and it 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. Buildings such as these are a ubiquitous feature of the outskirts of many Irish towns and villages, and indeed the Irish rural countryside. The vast majority of these buildings are now heavily altered, which makes this house a rare relatively intact example of its type. This simple house is well-built to a conscious architectural design, which could be viewed as an 'improved' interpretation of the vernacular housing of the time. Typically, the entrance door led straight into the kitchen where the stairs lead up to the attic storey, containing the bedroom, and there were normally two rooms on each floor. In common with the vernacular, these houses were one room deep. However, unusually for a probably local authority house, this building is named on the Ordnance Survey twenty-five inch map of c. 1905. This simple structure is an interesting element of the social history and built heritage of the Glenties area, and makes a positive contribution to the roadscape along the main approach road into the village from the south-west.