Lisselane, Clonakilty, 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. 188. “(Bence-Jones/IFR) A house in a simplified French chateau style built 1851-3 by William Bence-Jones to the design of Lewis Vullliamy. The house was built in an attractive situation facing own the valley of the Arigadeen River; there had been no house here before, for though the previous two generations of the family had owned the estate, they had not lived here. William Bence-Jones’s three small daughters helped with the marking out of the foundations; but only one of them lives to see the house completed, the other two being struck down by scarlet fever at the end of 1851. The house is square in plan, of two storeys over basement with a dormered attic in the high-pitched roof, which is on a bracket cornice. At one corner is a three storey round tower with a pointed roof, which, like the roof of the main block, is pleasantly sprocketed. Later in the C19, a smolking room wing was added, probably to the design of Thomas Newenham Deane, who also appears to have designed the front gate-lodge. A large glass conservatory, which had been made for the Cork exhibition of 1902, was added at one corner of the house by Reginald Bence-Jones, who in 1907 made a large library-hall, linked from floor to ceiling with oak bookcases, out of the former library, another rom and part of the original hall: “And what do you call this grand room?” asked the survivor of the three little girls who had marked out the foundations, now grown into a rather formidable elderly lady, when she saw it. Reginald Bence-Jones and his wife also greatly extended the high terrace below the house and made a notable garden on both sides of the river, which they widened into a lake. Lisselane was sold by Reginal Bence-Jones 1930 to Mr C.O. Stanley, who enlarged the hall by building a single-storey addition along with the entrance front ca 1947.” 

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

p. 45. Few significant country houses were built during the latter half of the C19. Most are of small to middling size, often with minimal Tudor or Italian trim. Unpretentious Italianate is found as Lissard (1854-5) near Skibbereen, Farran (1866) and Ballyvolane (1872) near Castlelyons. The finest of these Italianate houses is Montenotte House in Cork, with its double height top-lit cortile in the manner of Barry’s clubs in London. Lewis Villamy designed Lisselane (1851-3) near Clonakilty in a loose French-chateau idiom. Gothic houses are much rarer; exceptions include Dunboy (1866-70) near Castletownbere, a virtuoso Tudor Gothic house wiht mullioned-and-transomed windows mingled with Continental motifs in an assured and robust composition.  

p. 46. With its Scots Baronial stepped gables and corbelled tourelles, Blarney Castle House (1871-5) by the Belfast architect John Lanyon, is unique in Cork. The influence of Ruskin in both detailing and materials can be seen in a number of houses designed by William Atkins: Velvetstown, Ardavilling, and Parknamore. Lettercollum (1872) near Timoleague, by William H. Hill, and Thorncliffe (1865) at Monkstown, by Thomas N. Deane, are in a similar vein. After the 1880s major houses are rare, but there are good late C19 Jacobean interiors at Fota and Lota Lodge (Glanmire). 

The Edwardian Domestic Revival or Free Style, which favoured picturesque forms in brick and terracotta with gables, tall chimneys, tile-hanging, and mullioned and leaded windows, is generally confined to lodges, as at Castletownsend and Castle Mary (Cloyne), and to suburban houses in Cork city. Ashlin’s Clonmeen House (Banteer) is a rare country-house example. The Pavilion at Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork, is also Free Style and incorporates some Art Nouveau decorative elements. The last great country house to be built in Cork is Hollybrook Hall near Skibbereen, in a Free Style employing classical and rustic elements, with a wonderfully eclectic range of interiors. The garden buildings by Harold Peto at Ilnacullin were designed in a similar spirit.”