Mount Massy, Macroom, 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. 300. “(Massy/IFR) A two storey seven bay C18 house… now a ruin.” 

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.

“A seven bay two storey centre block was flanked by pedimented arches connected to the ends of the stables which have Venetian and Diocletian windows in the end elevation. The facades of the stable blocks which face each other across the yard have pedimented breakfronts. The foundation stone is dated 1783. In 1814 the seat of Hubert Baldwin. Main block in ruins.“
 
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. 
 
Not in national inventory