An exceptional new house captures the best of Irish architectural traditions, the finest modern craftsmanship available and the most up-to-date technology, as reports
Jeremy Musson
Kilboy, Co Tipperary The home of Mr and Mrs Shane Ryan
ACountry house is always the story of a place and of people. It is, in its materials and its presence, the result of a series of choices—some practical and others idealistic. But few country houses built today are created with the cultural ambition of Kilboy, Co tipperary. this new house, completed in 2013, was designed by Quinlan and Francis terry—their last collaborative project before Francis set up an independent practice—and constructed on the site of a late18th-century house, in a fine, mature landscape park (Fig 1). Late last year, it was awarded the Georgian Group’s inaugural Diaphoros Award for original, transcendent Classical design.
Kilboy has a remarkable story and the new house is the result of an unusual collaboration between architects and a client who had trained in architecture and was determined to have a house of distinctive Irish character. the result is also both a revival and an invention, as its main façade is modelled on that of the original house on this site, built in 1768–71 for Henry Prittie (later 1st Baron Dunalley). this 18th-century house was of a spirited Palladian design, with a piano nobile over a raised basement storey and two storeys above. Its architect was an amateur, William Leeson, a local landowner who laid out the new town of Westport, Co Mayo, in 1767.
the use of the Doric order—with a pediment over the central three bays of the