Coole Abbey, Fermoy, Co Cork  – recently sold  

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. 90. “A house built ca 1765 by Henry Peard; attributed, on stylistic grounds, to Davis Duckart. Of two storeys over basement; handsome ashlar facade of one bay on either side of a three bay breakfront with superimposed Doric and Ionic pilasters; the pilasters on teh upper storey and those on either side being heavily rusticated. Round-headed central window over doorway with semi-circular fanlight set in rectangular surround; bold quoins; shouldered window surrounds, some with keystones; broad steps up to hall door, platform with iron railings. C19 eaved roof. Curved quadrant walls link the back of the house to the stables with arches of plain cut stone blocks, forming a handsome courtyard. Large hall with staircase of solid C18 joinery.” 

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

p. 24. Ducart’s origins are a mystery…He made use of certain distinctive details such as vermiculated rustication, straight quoins, architraves with upward breaks and concave weatherings, and lunette-shaped basement windows, all of which look more to the Continent than to English Palladianism. 

25. It was Ducart who popularized in Cork the Palladian format of a central block connected to wings, although his plans are often more complex than those of Pearce and Castle. Kishannig is unquestionably the county’s finest C18 house: a central block with the proportions of a villa, standing two storeys over basement, and linked to L-plan wings by quadrant screen walls which enclose compact courts. On the garden front the wings are connected to the centre by straight arcades which terminate in domed pavilions. A similar pattern was employed at Castletown Cox, and in Cork in a modified form at The Island (demolished).  By contrast, at Coole Abbey House (Castlelyons) and Lota (Tivoli), Ducart used straight screen walls to connect the central block to service wings which themselves enclose a yard at the back of the house. It was this pattern which found most favour in Cork, providing a compact economical and efficient layout with a modicum of grandeur. Later C18 examples include Mount Massy (Macroom), Dunkathel (Dunkettle) and Gortigrenane (Minane Bridge), and on a smaller scale the glebe houses and Creagh and Kilmalooda. 

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.