Newmarket Court, Newmarket, 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. 225. (Aldworth/IFR) A fine early C18 house built for Richard Aldworth, MP, who married Hon Elizabeth St Leger, the woman Freemason; possibly to the design of one of the Rothery family of architects. The house was described (1750) as having “two regular fronts of hewn stone,” which it still has. They adjoin each ther, and are each of seven bays. The entrance front has a three bay recessed centre and a pedimented doorcase. The adjoining front has a three bay breakfront with superimposed pilasters, niches and an entablature between the two storeys which curves upwards in a Baroque manner. High pitched roof with solid parapet. For many years after being sold by the Aldworths, the house was owned by a religious order. At some period, the parapet was removed and the house re-roofed.” 

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

p. 21. After the Williamite wars, landowners had the confidence to invest in their property and improve their estates, building new houses and offices, and creating enclosed landscaped demesnes. Of the minor gentry, most aspired to nothing more than a house that was solidly built, symmetrical and convenient. At first, middling houses were unsophisticated in their form and planning, often only one room deep but sometimes having a return containing a staircase or service rooms, thus forming an L-plan or T-plan. Steep gable-ended roofs were almost universal, hipped roofs and the use of parapets the exception. This arrangement continued throughout the 18^th century for gentry houses, and well into the C19 for larger farmhouses. Early examples include Ballinterry (Rathcormac), Velvetstown (Buttevant), Rosehill at Ballynacorra (Midleton) and Aghadoe at Killeagh.  

Sometimes a double-pile plan was achieved by building a second, parallel range of rooms. In most early cases, each range had its own roof, so a pair of gables would be visible at the sides; covering both ranges [p. 22] with a single hipped roof would have stretched the abilities of most artisan builders before the later C18. 

Most houses of this class are built of rubble stone, which was then roughcast; ashlar, or even squared and coursed masonry is almost never encountered other than at the largest houses, such as Doneraile Court and Newmarket Court. Similarly brick was rarely used, early exceptions beign the demolished Castle Bernard and its sister house, Palace Anne (Enniskean).  

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.