Survey Data
Reg No
21513014
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic
Original Use
House
Historical Use
Toll house
In Use As
House
Date
1870 - 1890
Coordinates
157839, 157413
Date Recorded
15/07/2005
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached L-plan three-bay two-storey rendered house, built c. 1880, facing east and rising from the Abbey River quay walls located to the southwest of Mathew Bridge. House possibly incorporates fabric from earlier structures on this site. Hipped artificial slate roof with terracotta ridge tiles, gabled return and three rendered chimneystacks with terracotta pots and cast-iron rainwater goods. Painted rendered walls with rendered soldier quoins and plinth course. Square-headed window openings with limestone sills and uPVC windows with architrave surrounds. Central Venetian window opening to first floor with gable above and architrave surround, limestone sill and uPVC windows. Segmental-headed central door opening with architrave surround and modern timber-panelled door with sidelights and overlights opening onto limestone step. Single-bay single-storey section to north with a rounded parapet wall with square-headed opening. Blind opening to north side elevation rising from the rubble stone quay wall. Pair of wrought-iron gates to end of return gives access to rear with rendered wall and wrought-iron railings with spearhead finials.
Appraisal
This house of late nineteenth-century origins, is situated on the site of an earlier structure. The structure is marked on the first edition of the Limerick City Ordnance Survey (1840-41) and its footprint has changed in the 1872 edition of the city's Ordnance Survey. The present structure may date to after 1872. In all probability the original house was constructed along with, or shortly after, the construction of Mathew Bridge, which itself replaced an eighteenth-century bridge called New Bridge. Given its relative isolation from other such structures, it may have had a function relating to the bridge, such as a toll house.