After last week’s coverage of Loughton, County Offaly, here is the site where various members of the families who once owned the property are interred. Dating from 1830, the mausoleum stands in the graveyard of nearby Borrisnafarney church, erected the previous year with funds provided by the late Thomas Ryder Pepper who, it will be remembered, had died in 1828 following a hunting accident. Of dressed limestone with a pitched slab stone roof, the Gothic Revival building has buttresses at each corner and at the centre of the side elevations, at the top of which run lines of arcades. One curious detail: note how the pointed arch doorcase is not quite in the middle of the building (instead being slightly to the left of centre). Having fallen into some disrepair, the mausoleum underwent restoration in 2022.
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The off-center doorway reminds me of the north facade of Thomas Cooley’s Dublin City Hall (former Royal Exchange), where the brackets on the horizontal run of the entablature below the pediment don’t quite line up with their counterparts on the pediment’s pointed apex!
How interesting, I hadn’t noticed that (will look next time I’m in Dublin…)
Not only are the brackets on the Dublin City Hall pediment out of sync – which is particularly noticeable at the apex – they don’t even have the same number of brackets in the upper & lower sections. The angled raking cornice has a couple of extra brackets compared to the horizontal portion!
It is difficult to believe that this was a mistake in such an elaborately detailed building of this standard .