Creagh, Skibbereen, Co Cork – B&B  

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. 94. (Becher/IFR; Wrixon-Becher, Bt/PB; Harold-Barry) A pleasant Regency house of two storeys over basement, built ca. 1820. Entrance front with a single deep semi-circular bow and one bay; fanlighted doorway beneath trellised porch; a second bow is said to have been intended, but never built. Side elevation of three bays and a three sided bow. Eaved roof. Curving staircase, with slender wooden balusters; drawing room extending into the semi-circular bow, dining room in the three-sided bow. Delightful gardens laid out by the present owner, Mr P.J. Harold-Barry, extending to the shore of the estuary and along the banks of a mill-race and millpond, with the ruined mill providing a folly-like “object.”

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.