Killedmond

Killedmond, near Borris in County Carlow, is a mid-19th century house in a restrained Tudor-Revival style, which looks out over the valley of the River Barrow to the Blackstairs Mountains beyond. Designed by the architect Frederick Darley for the Kavanagh family of nearby Mount Leinster Lodge, the house is an accomplished and dramatic arrangement that uses gables, dormer windows, bargeboards and finials to produce a symmetrical five-bay façade. The three central bays on the ground floor are recessed behind a glazed loggia, flanked by the end bays, which break forward and terminate in wide gables.

The loggia is supported by cast-iron brackets on slender granite columns while the upper level of the central section is treated as an attic storey with tall, gabled dormer windows in the steeply sloping roof.

Two other fronts are virtually identical, with the exception of a half-octagonal bay window on the Eastern side, while the vertically paired widows, culminating in a series of matching gables, create an illusion of symmetry that is greatly enhanced by a profusion of plants and creepers on the walls. Their openings all have simple chamfered granite dressings while the sash windows retain their heavy mullions and delicate marginal glazing bars.

The interior is largely original, with good joinery, chimneypieces and plasterwork, and stained glass panels of hunting scenes in the original front door. The kitchen and service area are more rudimentary, with stone-flagged floors and a game larder still in fine working condition.

In Victorian times the house became the rectory for nearby Killedmond Church but was sold in the early twentieth century. Subsequently it passed through a succession of different families until purchased by the present owners almost twenty years ago.

In front are lawns, mature trees and a small lake fed by mountains streams. The grounds include a herbaceous border, a fruit garden and an old rose garden, where a series of interconnecting ponds form a miniature water ‘parterre’.