Tag Archives: Salterbridge

A Blackwater Beauty

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Wonderfully sited above the Blackwater river, Salterbridge, County Waterford has a complex building history. The core of the house, the three bays articulated by the giant limestone Tuscan pilasters and heavy parapet entablature, likely date from c.1751 when a residence was constructed here by Richard Musgrave who had acquired this portion of lands previously owned by the Earls of Cork. In the early 19th century his grandson Anthony Chearnley, who had married an heiress, embarked on a programme of enlargement and embellishment, extending the house’s by a further bay on either side and giving it the Wyatt windows seen on the first floor. Further work took place in the 1840s when the ground floor canted bays were added and the glazing here altered.
Salterbridge is among the houses lining the Blackwater that I shall be discussing in a talk hosted by the Irish Georgian Society at the Chesterfield Hotel, Palm Beach, Florida on Monday, March 7th. For further information, please see: https://www.igs.ie/events/detail/us-event-the-beauties-of-the-blackwater

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Carve the Year with Pride

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A detail of the carved oak chimneypiece in the entrance hall of Salterbridge, County Waterford. Although the core of the present house was built around the middle of the 18th century, it was subject to several alterations and aggrandisements thereafter. Some of these are sufficiently documented but the date of other interventions remains unclear. In the case of the entrance hall carving, even though the craftsman responsible for the work is nameless we can be sure when he undertook this task since the panelling to the left of the chimneypiece carries the year 1884.

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