Tag: frank kehane pevsner buildings ireland cork city county

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Lavender’s Blue + Castletownshend West Cork

A Glorified Trance On The Irish Shore

We’re never stopped galivanting. Our latest destination is the village where table turning and ghost writing take on whole new meanings. The shadow of authors Edith Somerville and Martin Ross (her real name was Violet Martin) looms large over the village of Castletownshend on Ireland’s south coast. Frank Keohane comments in The Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County (2020): “As the long time home of the writer, artist and Master of Fox Hounds Edith (1858 to 1949), Castletownsend is a highly evocative place, redolent of Anglo Irish society during its swansong. The village consists of two streets, of which the main street plunges downhill to the harbour. At the junction with the second street (The Mall) stand the ‘two trees’, a pair of sycamores, in what Edith described as a ‘barbaric stone flowerpot’. Castletownsend is also notable for the number of gentry houses built within the village rather than in the hinterland on small demesnes, in the more customary fashion.”

Maurice Collis writes in Somerville and Ross A Biography (1968), “Castletownshend was an unusual sort of place, because half a dozen families of the Cork landed gentry were settled there, instead of living, as the Irish landed gentry generally did, on estates dotted about the counties, miles apart from each other, as at Ross. Here their houses clustered round the village of Castletownshend, occupying a square mile of ground or less. The site was high ground which shelved steeply to the sea, a deep inlet or haven from the Atlantic like many others in western Cork. The view from the houses down to the haven and out to its mouth on the ocean was very fine. Near the west entrance to the village, a high point on the site, stood Drishane, the seat of the Somerville family.”

Gifford Lewis explains more about the authors in Somerville and Ross: The World of the Irish RM, (1985), “In childhood neither Edith nor Martin had recognised social and class barriers and both spoke naturally to those who in England would have been termed their ‘inferiors’. So that although they were from the privileged Anglo Irish gentry, they were at home in the native Irish world to the extent that their record of native speech in English is uniquely impressive. They knew that in their novels they were recording the death throes of their class – they made an unequalled portrait of the collapse of Anglo Ireland and the rise through it of the new Irish middle class.” Uniquely, Martin’s early demise didn’t stop them continuing to write in unison.

The two streets of Castletownshend are perpendicular to one another, meeting at the ‘two trees’ (to circumnavigate this pretty obstacle by car means mounting the pavement). Main Street is beautifully bookended by Drishane House at the top and The Castle at the bottom. The Mall heads out towards the coastline, ending with The Rocket House. Both streets are lined with beautiful townhouses, mainly Georgian. We last visited Drishane House in 1992. Little has changed, except the heavy Atlantic mist of that day 30 years ago has been replaced with serene unclouded skies on this visit. Jane and Tom Somerville are the present incumbents of Edith’s former home. Martin’s family home was Ross House, County Galway, but she was a frequent visitor to Castletownshend.

Frank comments on Drishane House, “A handsome six bay weather slated house built about 1790, the seat of the Somervilles. In the Edwardian period a new entrance was created on the more sheltered side elevation. This has an unusual rock-faced limestone doorcase with a scrolled pediment of vaguely Chinese appearance. The original wide tripartite limestone doorcase, with Tuscan demi-columns, now serves as a garden entrance.”

 

We interviewed Captain Paul Chavasse, owner of The Rocket House, two years before he died in 1994 aged 86. “Cousin Edith and Violet Martin were two energetic, lively, independent young women who were keen hunters,” he recalled. His parting shot was, “Don’t believe any rumours about the girls’ relationship. There’s no substance to them.” The Captain converted a row of coastguard cottages into his seven bedroom home. The cut stone building was designed by architect William Atkins in 1841. It takes its name from the rocket launchers that were used to fire ropes to assist ships in danger. The ropes were then used to haul sailors and passengers to safety. The Stag Rocks in Castlehaven Bay were notoriously treacherous. The Chavasse family home was Seafield, a few metres away from The Rocket House, on The Mall. Captain Paul’s wife was Elizabeth Somerville, Edith’s niece.

Crowning the hilltop high above The Castle is St Barrahane Castlehaven Parish Church and graveyard. Frank Keohane describes it well: “Delightfully picturesque, with glorious views over the harbour and many fine monuments.” The Somerville and Ross graves are simply marked: Martin’s is a simple squarish gravestone; Edith’s is an uncarved boulder like a menhir from the neighbouring hills. There are unusual metal – now elegantly rusted – graves too.

“Everyone goes to Mary Ann’s!” smiles Sharon Townshend of The Castle. A roll of owners was unveiled in 1996 by then Taoiseach Charlie Haughey. 1988 to the present Patricia and Fergus O’Mahony. 1983 to 1988 William and Ann Hosford. 1970 to 1983 Norman and Leonore Davis. 1963 to 1970 Prudence Sykes. 1947 to 1963 Mary Ann Hayes. 1930 to 1947 Mary Ann and Willie Casey. 1846 to 1930 Hennessy Family. So it’s named after two Mary Anns. Fergus recently celebrated his 60 and a half birthday and hosted a show in the Warren Art Gallery on the first floor of the pub. It included works by Irish artists Aidan Bradley, Susan Cairns, William Crozier, Felim Egan, Mat Grogan, Matt Lamb, Patrick McCarthy, John Minihan, Yvonne Moore and Cara Nagle.

Fergus joins us for an after dinner pint. “I was the manager at Blooms Hotel in Dublin,” he says, “before coming to Castletownshend.” The Chefs join us as well, having cooked dinner to perfection. Our starter was pan seared tiger prawns with fresh ginger, garlic and chilli followed by a main course of locally caught fresh scallops in a classic mornay sauce. Nights are long in West Cork. Next stop, the historian John Collins who has lived a few doors down from Mary Ann’s on Main Street for 40 years.

“The inspiration and aspirations of a community are in their architecture,” he believes. “There are 146 people living in the village.” John restored the three storey Quay Stores overlooking Castlehaven Bay and converted them to residential use. He also helped save the vintage petrol pump and telephone box facing one another further up the hill. “The police station in Graham Norton’s Holding is actually a house on Main Street,” he points out. “That cranky old diva Brenda Fricker appears in the television series.”

It’s now midnight and the wine and conversation are flowing. John is a born raconteur, never better when talking about Somerville and Ross’s table turning and ghost writing. We’re getting that end of the line vibe. The village terminates at The Castle gates. Castletownshend goes nowhere and is going nowhere and everyone is proud of that. We’re back in Savannah again, in another world.

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Lavender’s Blue + Kinsale West Cork

Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver

“The town of Kinsale is a large stinking filthy hole… I was glad to leave so vile a place…” So complained the Reverend Richard Allyn in his 1691 journal. Clearly not a fan. Things have somewhat improved in the intervening centuries. In fact Kinsale is the poster girl for West Cork – it’s bigger, brighter, busier and (running out of alliteration) richer than the stiff competition. There are three independent book shops: Bookstór, Write On and Kinsale Bookshop.

Kinsale’s architecture breathes colour. Every other building is brightly painted – no Farrow and Ball Elephant’s Breath here. It’s pointless being subtle against a usually grey sky. Burnt terracotta, highlighter pen pink, ochre yellow, pig’s blood, salmon pink, swamp green, turquoise sea blue, or “Duck egg blue” or “Tuscan yellow” as Mrs O’Driscoll (formerly Mrs Doyle of Father Ted) observes in Graham Norton’s new television detective series Holding set in West Cork. Bruno’s Italian Eatery (with scarlet red doors and window frames) wears its heart on its (unusually white) walls. A Christopher Morley quote “No man is lonely while eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention,” joins one from Sophia Loren, “Everything you see I owe to Spaghetti.” The tiniest dormers imaginable peep out from the slate roof above.

Frank Keohane notes in his 2020 Pevsner series architectural guide The Buildings of Cork City and County, “Kinsale has a large number of high quality houses, many featuring 18th century first floor oriel windows… the medieval street pattern very much survives, with streets creeping along the hillside at different levels.” He comments on one of the most historic buildings in the town, “Market and court house (former). Market Square. Completed by 1707, perhaps to the designs of Edward Bridges, architect and burgess of Kinsale, and possibly incorporating the remains of a market built circa 1610…” ‘Dutch Billy’ gables are hung with Cornish style weather slates.

Another impressive public building is positioned high up overlooking the marina. According to Walter’s Way 2015, “The Municipal Hall was rebuilt in the late 1920s having been burnt during the Civil War in 1922. Prior to that it was The Kinsale Club, the social hub for the British Soldiers stationed in Kinsale. In front is a lovely bowling green, with a magnificent view over the harbour. The Municipal Hall later became the offices of Kinsale Town Council.”

Frank states, “Municipal Hall (formerly Assembly Rooms). The Mall. A pretty affair in pasteboard Gothick, described as ‘recently built’ in 1837. Two storeyed. Four bay front, the outer bays advanced and raised above the centre to give the impression of towers. Big pointed windows look out over the harbour. Coursed rubble sandstone, articulated by string courses and tall shallow arched recesses to the end windows. Burnt in 1922, interior reconstructed in 1928 in a nondescript manner – adjoining bowling green laid out before 1656.” It bears more than a passing resemblance to Hillsborough Fort in County Down.

Founded in the 12th century by Anglo Normans, Kinsale soon became established as an important port trading in wine and salt, a taste (pun) of things to come. It’s now as famous for its restaurants as for being the starting point of the Wild Atlantic Way, a 2,500 kilometre touring route of oceanic coastline. Cherry blossom floating down the pavements in the spring breeze, like yesterday’s confetti, adds to the colour of the town. Kinsale is like a snow cooled drink at harvest time – it’s refreshing.

On a peninsula south of Kinsale, high on a hill across the River Bandon, lies Castlelands Graveyard. Collins, Keohane and White are popular surnames on the gravestones. One inscription reads, “Here lyeth the body of Cornelius Raily who departed this life August 15 1801 aged 42 years. God rest his soul.”

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Architects Architecture Art

Lavender’s Blue + Timoleague West Cork

Good Optics

Frank Keohane writes in The Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County (2020), “A small, charming village at the junction of two rivers at the head of Courtmacsherry Bay, in a landscape of gentle rolling hills. St Molaga founded a monastery here in the 7th century. Timoleague derives from ‘Teach Molaga’ – Molaga’s House.” Timoleague Friary merits two pages coverage starting with, “One of the most impressive and picturesque monastic establishments in County Cork.” The low winding coast road is memorable for being almost level with the sea.

“Timoleague, formerly spelt Tagumlag, Tymulagy or Tymoleague, derives its name from Tig Molaga (the house of Molaga,) an Irish saint who lived in 655 AD and to whom the abbey, built in the beginning of the 14th century was dedicated,” explains Tony Brehony in West Cork A Sort of History (1997). “St Molaga was a native of Fermoy and his principal monastery there was called Tulach Min Molaga… The town of Timoleague, and most of the adjoining countryside, belonged to the Hodnetts, an English family who came to Ireland from Shropshire. According to Charles Smith, ‘The family degenerated into the Irish customs and assumed the name of McSherry from whence came the name of the village of Courtmacsherry.’”

The first landmark that springs into vision along the coast road is the exquisite designed and exquisitely sited Timoleague House. Frank Keohane again, “The seat of the Travers family. Original house built circa 1818 and burnt in 1920. New house built in 1924 to designs by William H Hill Junior on a site closer to the castle. Exposed rubblestone walls. Hipped roof. Five bay garden front with a one-three-one rhythm and French windows.” Mark Bence-Jones provides some more detail in A Guide to Irish Country Houses (1996) “A square late Georgian house, built circa 1830 by Colonel Robert Travers. Burnt 1920; a new house built on a different site 1924 by S E Travers, to the design of W Henry Hill, of Cork. The new house is of stone, with a high eaved roof and a five bay symmetrical front, with modern casement windows; the ground floor windows having pleasantly cambered heads. Ruins of old Barry castle in grounds. Gardens with notable collection of trees and shrubs from all over the world.”

Continuing along the coast road, the next intriguing landmark is a church with a recently whitewashed tower. An Introduction to the Architectural Heritage of West Cork by Environment by Heritage and Local Government (2011) states, “The Church of the Ascension in Timoleague was built from the ruins of a medieval church in the first years of the 19th century and refitted in 1863 by Welland and Gillespie. It is in typical Gothic Revival style with a pinnacled two stage bell tower with additions of transepts and chancels occurring from 1863 to 1890.”

This is Anglo Irish country; West Britain to some. Tony Brehony lists the names of English settlers planted in West Cork. These surnames continue to be popular in the area: “Abbott, Adderly, Alcock, Atkins, Austen, Baldwin, Beamish, Bennett, Bernard, Berry, Birde, Blacknell, Blofield, Booll, Bramlet, Brayly, Brooke, Burwood, Cable, Cadlopp, Carey, Cecill, Chambers, Chipstow, Christmas, Churchill, Clark, Clear, Cleather, Coomes, Cooper, Corkwell, Cotterall, Cox, Crofte, Dashwood, Daunte, Davis, Deane, Dolbers, Downs, Drake, Dun, Dunkin, Elliot, Ellwell, Elms, Evans, Farre, Fenten, Flemming, Flewellan, Fondwell, Franck, Franklin, French, Frost, Fryher, Fuller, Gamon, Gardiner, Giles, Glenfoild, Grant, Greatrakes, Green, Greenway, Grenville, Griffith, Grimes, Grimstead, Grimster, Hales, Hammett, Hardinge, Harris, Harvie, Hewitt, Hill, Hitchcock, Hodder, Holbedyr, Howard, Hussey, Jackson, Jifford, Jones, Joyce, Jumper, Kent, Kerall, Kingston, Kite, Lake, Lambe, Lane, Langford, Lapp, Law, Light, Linscombe, Lissone, Little, Lucas, Margets, Martyn, Meldon, Moaks, Monoarke, Mowberry, Nelson, Newce, Newman, Osmond, Perrott, Peyton, Pitt, Poole, Popham, Porter, Preston, Radley, Rake, Rashleigh, Richmond, Saunders, Savage, Scott, Seymour, Shephard, Skence, Skinner, Skipwith, Smith, Snookes, Spenser, Spratt, Stanley, Sugar, Sweete, Symons, Synoger, Tanner, Taylor, Thomas, Thompson, Tickner, Tobye, Travers, Tucker, Turner, Valley, Vane, Vick, Wade, Ware, Warren, Watkins, Whaley, Wheatley, Wheeler, White, Wight, Williams, Willobe, Wiseman, Woodroffe, Woolfe.”

Ballinspittle lies 16 kilometres east of Timoleague and was the location of a very 1980s Catholic Ireland phenonomen. The location was a grotto outside the village to be precise. In the heady summer of 1985, a worshipper at the grotto reported that the statue of the Virgin Mary had moved. A host of Marian apparitions followed across the land. Along the roadside edge of the grotto, a balustrade of sky blue painted concrete letters reads, “I am The Immaculate Conception”. It’s very moving.

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Lavender’s Blue + Skibbereen West Cork

The Capital of the Carberies 

It’s 30 years since our last jaunt but The West Cork Hotel has barely changed – it’s under new ownership (the latest generation of the Murphy family having retired) but there’s still the same relaxed country vibe. Seafood chowder and beer battered fish and chips are served with the obligatory West Coast Coolers in the bar overlooking the old railway bridge crossing the River Ilen. It is what it was.

In his comprehensive 2020 book The Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County, Frank Keohane describes Skibbereen as, “A substantial market town, the southernmost in Ireland.” And The West Cork Hotel as, “A four storey, four bay Italianate block built alongside the bridge in 1902. Stuccoed, with string courses and a hipped roof. First floor windows with architraves and flat cornices. Upper floor windows with chamfered jambs. At street level the façade is articulated by pilasters and paired round arched windows.” At four storeys in height, the hotel is a skyscraper in West Cork terms, visible from the fields around. A cast iron balcony stretching across the first floor of the façade lends it a Deep South – America not Ireland – quality.

Why say three syllables when one will do. Skib has gone a tad hipsterish – more of that in a moment – but Dick Draper, the local optometrist who died a couple of years ago aged 104 would still recognise most of it. His friend and fellow Gospel Hall attendee Lillian Clerke is still around. Her very sweet shop (she sold the best clove rock in town) on Bridge Street may have closed but her surname is clear for all to see on the fascia. Our driver from Dolphin Taxis remembers Dick well. Chauffeuring us through the countryside as the hazy pink haloed golden circle of the sun sets, he recalls as a child having an accident and when he woke up in hospital, Dick was praying over him. “A very holy man. Did you know the Brethren have their own separate cemetery in Skib?”

On things hip, there’s a foodie farmers’ market on Saturday mornings in the town centre car park next to Abbeystrewey Church of Ireland. The Methodist Church is now a restaurant; architecturally it’s all show: a tall gabled red brick façade conceals a cement faced low pitched block behind. Trance music vibrates from The Mardyke Maggie antiques warehouse, a treasure trove of bygones ready to be revived. Then there’s the Antiquity Bookshop and Vegan Deli where you can have cruelty free edible treats while browsing for bestsellers. “Skib is the hub for small villages around like Baltimore,” confirms our driver.

Mona Best owns Bridge House, a long low two storey gaily painted bed and breakfast in the heart of Skib. She muses, “My perfect day is a day when I make other people happy; it’s in the giving that we receive. So when people come to stay with me I welcome them to a world full of magic as I like them to enjoy and experience something truly unique and memorable. My home is an installation representing my creative artistic temperament and eclectic bohemian taste for quirky Victorian objets d’art and antique furniture. This is my stage where I take people on a journey and transport them from the ordinary to the extraordinary. I’m a fun loving person: I love to entertain and bring happiness into people’s lives. It is not how much we give but how much love we put into giving. Every day is beautiful and it is our responsibility to ourselves to pursue and experience all that is magical and wonderful in our lives.”

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Lavender’s Blue + Bantry House West Cork

Owning It 

The iconic garden front graces the dust jacket front cover of Frank Keohane’s 2020 publication, the latest in the Pevsner series, Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County. His description opens with some understatement, “The house is extensive.” The Chartered Building Surveyor and architectural historian continues, “At its core is a three storey, five bay block, known originally as Blackrock, built by Samuel Hutchinson circa 1730. The Whites acquired it in the 1730s but did not take possession until the 1760s. They renamed the house Seafield, and undertook improvements following the marriage of Simon White to the heiress Frances Jane Hedges Eyre in 1766. In 1790 the heroic Richard White made an advantageous marriage to Margaret Anne Hare, who possessed a dowry of £30,000. Soon afterwards, he added bow ended two storey wings, the same height as the three storey centre. The 2nd Earl of Bantry, Viscount Berehaven, was responsible for the house’s great mid 19th century transmogrification.”

Julie Shelswell-White lives at Bantry House and a couple of years ago along with her brother Sam took over its running. She suggests, “Take a guided tour or wander about at your own leisure to learn about the history of this family home. Relax with a light lunch or tea and cake in our tearoom overlooking the sunken garden. For a special treat enjoy an afternoon tea in the Library. Our bed and breakfast in the East Wing of the house has six rooms all en suite, with beautiful views of the formal garden. Guests are welcome to enjoy a drink from the honesty bar by the open fire in the Library or take a fellow guest on, in the Billiards Room. The estate is the perfect setting for weddings and celebrations. From a simple ceremony or intimate dinner to full estate rental, the house and garden offer many options.”

Old photographs show how little the house has changed in the last 100 years or so. One part that has disappeared with a trace or two is the huge conservatory that once arched and vaulted and summer salted its way across the six central bays of the garden front. The red brick pilasters topped with Corinthian Coade stone capitals between these six bays were chopped off in line with the top of the piano nobile windows at the time of the conservatory’s construction. This has left these pilasters ‘floating’ in perpetuity, a charming idiosyncrasy. The now white window frames of the house were once painted seaweed green. There’s a sublime Mediterranean feel to the whole estate from its loggia verandah to the balustraded prospect over Bantry Bay.

But there’s an inherent fragility despite the air of apparent permanence. Raghnall Ó Floinn, Director of the National Museum of Ireland, explains, “Bantry House is a major tourist asset in the southwest of Ireland but action by the State to secure its future and that of its contents should be undertaken for the public good. Such an action by the State to protect our much diminished cultural heritage contributes to the national sense of health and wellbeing; it is the right thing to do… In the overwhelming majority of cases the contents of these great Irish houses have been broken up and sold, ending up scattered throughout the world in museums, galleries and private hands. Once sold, such collections can never be replaced. Successive owners of the house have been forced to sell parts of the contents of the house piecemeal.”

The Bantry House Report of 2015 by the Director of Crawford Art Gallery in Cork City, Peter Murray, investigated a plan for the gallery and the family to work together to ensure the survival of the important historic house and its collection of paintings, sculpture, tapestries and decorative arts. “While the Guardi paintings have gone, sold in the 1950s, and while some of the tapestries and paintings have also been sold, Bantry House is remarkable in that much of the wonderful collection amassed in Europe in the 1820s by the White family, still remains in situ two centuries later. However, the financial viability of Bantry House remains a personal challenge, and in October 2014, the Shelswell-White family announced, with great regret, that the remainder of the collection would have to be sold, to meet bank debts. In the event, the sale did not take place, but the future of the collection remains very much in jeopardy.”

“The proposed solution for Bantry House is for its collection to be acquired by a donor, an individual or a company, and then donated to the Crawford Art Gallery. The donor can then avail of tax relief under Section 1003 of the Finance Act. The Crawford Art Gallery would then lend the collection back to Bantry House on a long term agreement, subject to the house remaining open to the public. The outcome would be very similar to that of the Wedgwood Collection in Britain. This would ensure the collection remains in Ireland as an important cultural tourism attraction.” Solutions continue to be sought, but for now, the house, its contents and estate are together.

Ireland just doesn’t have a country house visiting tradition. It’s a very British thing. Calke Abbey, a National Trust property in rural Derbyshire, is so popular that it has timed entry tickets and queues wrap round the house at weekends. Chatsworth House, also in Derbyshire, the main home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire (their holiday home is Lismore Castle in County Waterford), opened to the public in 1946 around the same time as Bantry House did the same thing. And numbers over the threshold of Chatsworth? Around two million visitors a year. And Bantry House? Circa 25,000. Admittedly Calke Abbey and Chatsworth are close to conurbations but still.

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Lavender’s Blue + Mizen Head West Cork

Sweetie Darling

Charles Haughey, thrice Taoiseach, and his lover girl Terry Keane were well known patrons of the arts in the closing years of the 20th century. Rather more obscurely, Charlie was once shipwrecked in heavy fog off Mizen Head. “We were sailing our former boat Taurima back to Howth at the end of September 1985 after she had spent most of the summer around the Blaskets. As night fell, a thick dense fog came down reducing visibility to zero. Due to a malfunction of our radar system, Taurima went on to the rocks at Mizen Head… She went down very quickly – in about five minutes – but we had time to send out a May Day and launch the life raft and small dinghy which was kept aboard.”

Things went from the their worst to not so bad. “Our May Day was picked up by the Shannon Marine Rescue and Coordination Centre, Valentia Radio and the lightkeepers in the Mizen Lighthouse. The rescue services went into operation immediately and both the Valentia and Baltimore Lifeboats were launched… I shall always remember the warm friendly atmosphere aboard the lifeboat; her crew were just marvellous. Listening to their good natured banter, repartee and wit, it was difficult to remember that they all have their services voluntarily and had been dragged from their homes or their socialising in the early hours of Sunday morning and put to sea.”

This story is recorded in a 1994 framed copy of the Sunday Independent on the wall of the meteorological lodge at Mizen Head. On the edge of the world, followers of the Shipping Forecast will know Mizen Head falls under Fastnet. The other sea areas around Ireland in an anticlockwise fashion are Shannon, Rockall, Malin and Irish Sea. Frank Keohane opens his 2020 epic book The Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County, “Cork is the southernmost and largest county in Ireland…” This is the Very Wild Atlantic Way. Marine mammal spotting – for those strong enough to hold onto binoculars in the ever prevailing winds – includes Risso’s Dolphins (March to May), Minke Whales (March to November), Basking Sharks (April to June), Common Dolphins (April to December), Humpback Whales (May to December), Atlantic Sunfish (June to August) and Fin Whales (June to December). Stormzy. Stormby. Stormy.

Sharon Townshend, châtelaine of The Castle at Castletownshend, a few kilometres west of Mizen Head, describes it well, “At Ireland’s most southwesterly point, cross the iconic Mizen Bridge to the signal station and enjoy the spectacular sea views out to the Fastnet Lighthouse. The Mizen Head visitor centre with a café and gift shop is positioned hight on a cliff and exhibits all sorts of maritime paraphernalia, the station keeper’s living quarters as well as an amazing photographic collage of the wildlife and underwater life.”

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Architecture Country Houses Town Houses

Lavender’s Blue + Goleen West Cork

Islands in the Dream  

Sounding like the title of a Dolly Parton song, Goleen is so beloved throughout Ireland that even a bungalow in Carryduff outside Belfast is named after it. The hamlet at the crossroads pulls on the heartstrings. Frank Keohane’s 2020 masterwork The Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County mentions two of its buildings: St Patrick’s Catholic Church and Kilmoe Parish Church of Ireland. He also refers to two buildings in its neighbourhood: Ballyrisode House at Toormore and Church of the Poor Church of Ireland at Altar. Goleen’s architectural presence is mainly two storey vernacular except for one grand three storey Georgian house with shell pink painted walls and steel blue painted window frames and front door. Heading northeast from Goleen is Dunbeacon Castle or at least a wall of what was once Dunbeacon Castle. To the southwest is the golden expanse of Barley Cove Beach. West Cork never disappoints.