Altamira, Liscarroll, Co Cork
Mark Bence-Jones. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.
p. 3. “(Purcell/LGI1912) A plain three storey Georgian block, 3 bay entrance front, 4 bay front adjoining; entrance doorway of rather urban style with a large fanlight extending over the door and two sidelights.”
The Buildings of Ireland. Cork City and County. Frank Keohane. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 2020.
p. 23. The first notable exponent of the Palladian style in Ireland was Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, but neither he nor his successor, Richard Castle, is known to have worked in Cork, and there are no great Palladian houses here to river Castletown, Co Kildare, or Russborough. In part this may be explained by Cork’s limited links with Dublin, so that its architecture instead held tight to a conservative Anglo-Dutch idiom well into the mid C18. The Palladian formula of a central corps de logis linked to pavilions by quadrants therefore found little favour in Cork during the early Palladian period. Exceptions include the demolished Hollyhill (near Kinsale). Garrretstown was to have had a central block but only the two-storey wings were completed. Crosshaven’s wings are free-standing.
Instead, architects, builders and patrons made do with a simple and often tentative assimilation of Palladian elements. What did find favour was the sort of compact and economical four-square block employed by Pearce at Cashel and by Castle at the central blocks of Bellinter and Hazelwood. External refinements at such houses are confined to combinations of window and door surrounds, platbands, occasionally a cornice, and in rare cases a parapet to conceal the hipped roof. Early Georgian examples include Doneraile Court and Maryborough at Douglas; Bessborough at Blackrock (Cork city), and Crosshaven date from the mid century. Late C18 examples of these high, four-square blocks such as Coolmore (Ringaskiddy), Hoddersfield (Crosshaven) and Altamira (Liscarrol) are particularly plain, with an almost complete paring back of embellishment.
p. 488. A big four-square, three-storey early C19 house, hipped-roofed. Roughcast weathered to a mellow ochre. Three- and four-bay facades with generous sash windows. Handsome tripartite limestone doorcase with Tuscan pilasters and a broad web-like elliptical fanlight. Late Neo-classical foliate plaster friezes and ceilings, similar to those at Milltown Castle. Lodge with a pedimented Doric porch and ashlar façade.”
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Originally a Smyth house, Altamira became the home of the Purcell family in the late 18th century and remained in their possession for about a century. Occupied by William Purcell in 1814 and 1837 and by his nephew Pierce Purcell at the time of Griffith’s Valuation. Pierce held the property from the Earl of Bandon and Lady O’Brien. The house was valued at £34. In the 1940s the Irish Tourist Association Survey noted that Altamira was then the residence of the Hannigan family.
Detached three-storey over basement country house, built c. 1810, having three-bay front (north) and west elevations and four-bay south and east elevations, with recent single- and two-storey lean-to extensions to west elevation. Skirt artificial slate roof with cut limestone cornice stones below overhanging eaves, rendered chimneystacks and cast-iron rainwater goods. Roughcast rendered walls with cut limestone string course between ground floor and basement. Camber-headed window openings with cut limestone sills and diminishing timber sliding sash windows, six-over-six pane to ground and first floors, and three-over-three pane to second floor. Round-headed openings to west elevation, three-over-three pane to top floor with spoked fanlight and cut limestone sill and double-leaf door to first floor with timber spoked fanlight. Segmental-headed front door opening with cut limestone doorcase comprising pilasters with moulded plinths and capitals, flanking timber panelled door and decoratively glazed sidelights, surmounted by carved limestone cornice, ornate spider-web and petal fanlight and moulded limestone archivolt. Cut limestone threshold to entrance. Decorative stucco ceilings to interior.
This impressive country house was named after the Duke of Wellington’s victorious battle at Altamira, Portugal. It was described by Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) as a ‘handsome mansion in (an) extensive and richly planted demesne’. The seat of the Purcell family, this important example of an early nineteenth-century country house retains significant original features including a well-executed and intact carved limestone doorcase, diminishing camber-headed timber sliding sash windows and highly skilled, beautifully crafted stucco ceilings. The original character and form of the building and its associated structures has been preserved, an unaltered instance of the building and decorative techniques employed in grand houses at this time.
Irish Historic Houses 