Survey Data
Reg No
12305027
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social
Original Use
Hospital/infirmary
Historical Use
House
Date
1825 - 1830
Coordinates
240990, 164784
Date Recorded
19/05/2004
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached five-bay single-storey fever hospital with half-dormer attic, built 1826, on a T-shaped plan with single-bay (three-bay deep) full-height central return (east). Now disused. Hipped slate roof on a T-shaped plan with clay ridge tiles, red brick Running bond off-central chimney stack on cut-limestone chamfered cushion course on limestone ashlar base having stepped capping, and cast-iron rainwater goods on roughcast eaves retaining cast-iron downpipes. Creeper- or ivy-covered roughcast battered walls on rendered plinth. Segmental-headed central door opening with limestone flagged threshold, and concealed dressings on drag edged tooled cut-limestone padstones framing timber boarded door having overlight. Square-headed window openings to drag edged cut-limestone sills, and concealed dressings framing timber casement windows. Set back from road with roughcast piers to perimeter having rendered rounded capping supporting timber double gates.
Appraisal
A fever hospital erected with financial assistance from the Grand Jury under the Hospitals (Ireland) Act 1818 (County of Kilkenny at a General Assizes and General Gaol Delivery 1826, 65) representing an important component of the early nineteenth-century built heritage of Freshford with the architectural value of the composition confirmed by such attributes as the symmetrical footprint centred on a restrained doorcase; the feint battered silhouette; the disproportionate bias of solid to void in the massing compounded by the slight diminishing in scale of the openings on each floor producing a feint graduated visual impression; and the high pitched roof showing a rough cut slate finish. A period of unoccupancy notwithstanding, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, both to the exterior and to the interior, thus upholding the character or integrity of a fever hospital making a pleasing visual statement in a sylvan street scene.