Re: Re: Beautiful

Regional variations exist not just in vernacular architecture, unless you define ‘vernacular’ very broadly. Kilkenny City has an unusual feature where the doors of two adjacent Georgian buildings are united under one fanlight (making for interesting solutions to the problem of internal partitioning). Many buildings in County Laois display a feature where the front door is recessed in a shallow ‘scalloped’ arch. Buildings in coastal towns such as Kinsale often have slate hanging on their (usually seaward) walls. Cork Georgian is markedly different from Dublin Georgian (and Limerick Georgian etc etc).
I must however disagree with you, Boyler, when you say that “All the old buildings in Ireland were designed on foreign architecture like French Gothic for churches and Italian Classical for the Customs House, Four Courts etc.”. This is far too simplistic a reduction. It might be true to say that there was no native style for large public buildings, but neither was Italian classical or French classical a native style, borrowed as it was from ‘the antients’. Each generation has taken a template and put a native spin on it, which has been used by many writers as an argument for the enduring validity of the classical model. If I must cite examples, then the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, the church on Pope’s Quay in Cork and the two Georgian churches (both Cathedrals?) in Waterford City spring readily to mind to refute your assertion re French Gothic. And the eighteenth century ‘barn’ church is one of Ireland’s most distinctive building types- a mix of large scale public with vernacular.