Cloghroe House, Blarney, Co Cork

Bence-Jones, Mark. 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. 85. “(Mahony/IFR A Georgian house built on the site of an old castle.” 

Not in national inventory 

The Buildings of Ireland. Cork City and County. Frank Keohane. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 2020. 

p. 328. “A low, rambling two storey mid-Georgian house of several parts, arranged with its offices around a rectangular court. Rendered facades with hipped roofs. The principal front, E, has a tall central bow-fronted block, three windows wide, with lower two-bay side ranges. Irregular n-facing entrance front with an early C19 doorway at one end, with decorative panels and a squashed elliptical fanlight. This N front continues with two taller three-bay blocks of differing ages. Varying windows indicate the evolution of the building; the original camber-headed windows have exposed sash boxes while the taller early C19 N ranges have tall rectangular openings. Inside, the C18 rooms have low ceilings, lugged architraves and fielded panels. The handsome stair, in a separate hall in the E range, has columnar balusters, fluted Corinthian newels and richly carved tread-ends. The taller rooms in the bow-fronted block to the E range and in the entrance front have early C19 reeded architraves and ten-panel doors.” 

The Buildings of Ireland. Cork City and County. Frank Keohane. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 2020. 

p. 27. Of mid-C18 Palladian interiors, good representative examples with panelled dados, lugged architraves, fielded panelling and chunky cornices are found at Coole Abbey House, Assolas, Cloghroe, Kilshannig, and Blackrock House. Curiously, the heavy Palladian lugged architrave remained in use in the county long after it fell out of fashion elsewhere. At Lisnabrin, Dunkathel, Burton, Rockforest and Muckridge, the form is encountered in late C18 Neoclassical interiors, suggesting an innate conservatism among local joiners. The finest joinery in most houses is reserved for the staircase, and in many cases these have survived. The best early C18 staircases, at the Red House and Annes Grove, have alternating barley-twist and columnar balusters, big Corinthian newel posts, ramped handrails and carved tread-end brackets. Mount Alvernia (Mallow), Carrigrohane and Cloghroe all have good mid-C18 staircases of a similar type; that at Lota is exceptional in its use of mahogany and for its imperial plan. Good Neoclassical staircases, geometrical in form with delicate ironwork balustrades, survive at Maryborough, Newmarket Court and Castle Hyde; the destruction of those at Vernon Mount is a particularly sad loss. 

The best early plasterwork is that of the Swiss-Italian brothers Paolo and Filippo Lafranchini at Riverstown, where highly sculptural late Baroque figurative ornament is applied to the walls and ceilings of the Saloon… Filippo alone decorated two rooms at Kilshannig, blending late Baroque figures with lighter acanthus arabesques and putti. Rococo plasterwork featuring scrolling acanthus and birds comparable to the Dublin school of the 1760s is encountered in the Saloon at Castlemartyr, and at Maryborough. At Laurentium (Doneraile) and the Old College (Youghal), it is rather more hesitant. For the most part, stucco workers remain anonymous, so it is a happy circumstance that Patrick Osborne’s accomplished work at the former Mansion House at Cork is recorded. He also probably worked at Lota, as well as at Castle Hyde. Good Neoclassical plasterwork in low relief and employing small-scale classical motifs of the type made fashionable by Robert Adam and James Wyatt is found at Maryborough, at Old Court House (Rochestown), and at the Old College and Loreto College at Youghal.  

http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/property-show.jsp?id=3196

In 1786 Wilson refers to Cloghroe as the seat of Mr. Capel. In the late 18th century this house passed by marriage from the Capel family to the Fitzgerald family. J. C. Fitzgerald was resident at Cloghroe in 1814. The house, valued at £28, was occupied by Thomas Keogh in the early 1850s and held from Thomas Fitzgerald. In 1944 the Irish Tourist Association Survey referred to it as the residence of Major O’Mahony of Blarney Mills. A house is still extant at Cloghroe.