Survey Data
Reg No
22125015
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social
Original Use
Court house
Date
1840 - 1845
Coordinates
200201, 113740
Date Recorded
25/04/2005
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached five-bay two-storey courthouse, dated 1841, with slightly advanced central bays to entrance front at right angles to street, three-bay end elevation to street, and with lean-to single-storey extension to north. Now disused. Hipped slate roof with cast-iron rainwater goods and cut limestone eaves course, moulded to advanced bays. Rendered walls, painted to street elevation, with cut limestone platband and plinth course, except for rear elevation. Date plaque to front elevation. Square-headed window openings with timber sliding sash six-over-six pane windows to street and to end bays of front elevation. Tall round-headed window openings to first floor of advanced bays and to rear elevation, with Y-tracery. Stone sills, painted to street elevation. Door openings to end bays of front, with tooled ashlar limestone doorcases, having pediment-style lintels. Panelled timber double-door to south-east and replacement timber to north-east. Former fire station to south-west corner of site. Painted rendered wall to street with cast-iron railings, and tooled limestone capped piers with double-leaf cast-iron gates. Rubble stone boundary walls to site.
Appraisal
This former civic building is characteristically situated behind high cast-iron gates and railings. The use of a standard courthouse design on a deep and narrow site means that the building is oriented perpendicular to the street,giving this structure an air of impenetrability, slightly tempered by the low-set windows to the street elevation. Fine craftsmanship is exhibited in the intersecting tracery to the round-headed windows, and the heavy horizontal courses. Additional significance can be attributed to this courthouse due to its close links with local history, being the site where the last man to be publicly hanged in Clonmel was convicted.