Palace Ann, Ballineen, 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. 230. “(Beamish-Bernard, sub Beamish/IFR) A very distinguished early C18 house of red brick with stone dressings, built 1714 by Arthur Bernard, whose brother, Francis, judge of common pleas, was the ancestor of the Earls of Bandon; named in honour of Arthur Bernard’s wife, Ann Power or Le Poer. …Arthur Bernard, the builder of the house, though very much a member of the ruling Protestant establishment at Bandon, was tolerant, not to say humanitarian – enough to construct a hiding-hole behind the dining room panelling in which Catholic priests who were in trouble with the authorities could be concealed….Arthur Beamish-Bernard’s nephew and heir, another Arthur, who went to America, sold the last remnants of the estate 1875, by which time the house had fallen into ruin. The walls of the centre block were still standing 1956, but were demolished soon afterwards; now only the right hand wing remains, which though dilapidated still has its roof and some of its windows.” 

Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.

p. 52. “…Centre block of three storeys over high basement with three curvilinear gables linked by one bay wings to two bay pavilions also with curvilinear gables. The pedimented doorcase of the central block was mid-18C. The house was faced with red brick, with cut stone dressings. Good interior with panelled rooms. Main block after standing as a ruin for many years was demolished in the late 1950s, only the left hand pavilion remains.“

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).