Solsborough (or Solsboro) House, co Tipperary – Restored ruins, or at least re-roofed, since mid-C20
not in Bence-Jones
Detached three-storey over basement former country house, built c. 1830, having pedimented breakfront to three-bay front elevation with porch, five-bay side elevations, projecting three-bay block and two-storey wing to rear. Top storey added c. 1860. Roof removed 1953, cut stone chimneystacks remain. Ashlar limestone walls with brick inner leaf, rubble limestone to basement, limestone string course and rendered brick eaves course. Square-headed window openings with limestone voussoirs to front elevation and brick to sides and basement, with cut stone sills. Round-headed window with carved limestone archivolt and consoles to breakfront. Square-headed door opening with limestone surround recessed in flat-roofed porch comprising limestone Doric columns and pilasters supporting frieze and cornice, with limestone steps and parapet walls. Extensive outbuildings to site.
Appraisal
This house makes an interesting group with its extensive outbuildings, walled garden, and the gates and railings to the entrance. Although roofless for over fifty years, the walls are in remarkably good condition, evidence of the high quality masonry. Once the home of the Poe family, the estate was financed by Indigo plantations in India, until the invention of synthetic indigo dye in the late nineteenth century caused the market to collapse.
https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/22402022/solsborough-tipperary-north
Outbuildings set around two yards, built c. 1830. South yard has walls to east and south and L-plan building to other sides comprising six-bay two-storey former carriage house and hayloft to west and six-bay two-storey former carriage house with integral carriage arch to north. North yard has L-plan building comprising two-storey three-bay former stables and hayloft with bellcote to west, multiple-bay single-storey outbuildings to east, new outbuildings to north, and north elevation of south yard to south side. Remains of walled garden to north. Outbuildings have pitched and hipped slate roofs with slated ventilation openings and brick chimneystacks, dressed limestone walls, square-headed openings with timber louvres, timber sash windows and matchboard doors and brick surrounds. Round-headed door openings to south yard with paned fanlights and brick surrounds, and elliptical-arched carriage opening with dressed limestone voussoirs. Stables to south yard have cut limestone bellcote with pediment and string courses, and brick mangers to interior. Remains of a walled garden to north, with brick faced north wall.
Appraisal
These outbuildings are remarkably well constructed for such functional buildings, with dressed limestone used for the more prestigious front yard. They form an interesting group with Solsborough House, the walled garden, and the gates and railings at the entrance. The faint but discernable horizontal line across the façades of the buildings shows their original height, before being raised to be in proportion with the house, which had a third storey added. The louvres and vents throughout were used for air circulation for drying hay, and today give a distinctive roofline to the buildings. The roofs were so well constructed that the original slates are still in situ. The brick used in the west façade of the stables wall provides cavities for built-in mangers for hay. On the interior, carved timber arches delineate each stall. Bricks are also used to face the south elevation of the north wall of the former walled garden and would have stored heat, and enabled the cultivation of fruit trees from warmer climates. 
https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/22402023/solsborough-tipperary-north
Quadrant gateway erected 1863. Square-profile cut limestone piers with moulded panels to inner and outer ends of quadrants. Inner piers flanked by ornate cast-iron piers to pedestrian entrances. Similar ornate cast-iron gates and railings, latter with limestone plinth. Snecked dressed limestone walls with triangular coping to site boundary. The insciption on the northern pier unusually gives the builder’s name and date of erection of the gateway.
Appraisal
These gates and railings are of apparent artistic value, and evidently the work of skilled craftsmen. The attention to detail is such that the outer pier to the north has been carved on two faces and turned at an angle to present a pleasing aspect to both approaches. These impressive gates form an interesting group with Solsborough House, its outbuildings and walled garden.
https://theirishaesthete.com/2024/12/06/solsborough/
After Monday’s melancholic post about the former bishop’s palace in Clonfert, here is a more cheering story. More than eight years ago, in May 2016, the Irish Aesthete was taken to see a house called Solsborough in County Tipperary. Dating from the first half of the 19th century, although likely on the site of an older property, the place had long since been unroofed and abandoned, and like so many other buildings of its kind, left a shell on the landscape. But in 2014 Solsborough was bought by the present owners who gradually embarked on an ambitious and thorough restoration programme: as can be seen in the photographs above, this was only beginning to get underway at the time of the 2016. Today the house has been fully and wonderfully brought back to use, a further demonstration that no such building is beyond salvation – and re-use – provided there is sufficient vision on the part of those responsible.
https://theirishaesthete.com/2025/09/08/solsborough-2/
Make Merry and Be Glad
Of late, and even before the publication last year of The Irish Country House: A New Vision (Rizzoli, 2024), the Irish Aesthete has been increasingly interested in discovering historic properties which have undergone an improvement in their fortunes. For many decades, and certainly for much of the last century, our architectural heritage suffered from cruel, and even from time to time gratuitous, negligence. In consequence, we lost much which could have and should have been saved, as can be seen by the considerable number of ruined structures scattered across the national landscape. But of late, there appears to be a change of attitude and, at least in some quarters, a desire not to leave older structures fall into ruin. Instead, they are being brought back from the brink by a new generation of owners who have the imagination to see the potential in what was built by our predecessors, and a determination that these buildings have a future as well as a past.
Over the past ten years or so, a number of state-backed initiatives, run by both central and local government as well as a number of other agencies, have begun to provide financial assistance to owners who wish to undertake restoration work on their historic property. While the funds available are not necessarily as much as might be needed, the existence of these supports likewise indicates a change in attitude towards our built heritage, not least a better understanding of how important is its preservation. Of course, many old properties continue to face dilapidation and disrepair, most often through simple neglect. However, it is imperative that sometimes we celebrate what has been saved. As the prodigal father proclaims to his disgruntled elder son in Luke’s Gospel, ‘it was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.’
Today’s pictures show just such a lost and found property, Solsborough, County Tipperary. The present house dates back to the 1830s but appears likely to have been constructed on the site of an older residence since the family who lived there, the Poes, had been settled in this part of the country since the 1660s. Like so many other buildings of this ilk, Solsborough was unroofed in c.1953, thereby saving the then-owners the necessity of paying domestic rates. When the Irish Aesthete first visited the place nine years ago, little more than the exterior walls remained, although by then the building was encased in scaffolding as the owners, who had bought it in 2014, were already intending to embark on a restoration programme. Returning to the house now, and as these pictures show, it is difficult to believe this was once a roofless ruin, so thorough a job has been undertaken on the place. To see Solsborough in all its glory now is to understand why there are occasions when we must make merry and be glad.
I shall be speaking next Thursday, September 11th at the Old Museum Building, Belfast on the subject of The Irish Country House: A New Vision (see The Irish Country House: A New Vision by Robert O’Byrne – UAH) and at the Hunt Museum, Limerick on Thursday, September 18th (see Hunt Family Memorial Lecture – ‘The Irish Country House: A New Vision’ – The Hunt Museum)
Irish Historic Houses 