Building blemishes on our landscape

DRIVING about our lovely country we couldn’t but notice a high percentage of houses built in the heart of the country in recent decades are out of keeping with their surroundings like a bum note in a symphony.

How they got planning permission beggars belief. Despite such publications as The Cork Rural Design Guide, showing what is and what is not acceptable, and An Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape illustrating traditional styles, extraordinary concoctions of houses continue to blight the beauty of Ireland, while fine, old houses and outbuildings are let go to rack and ruin.

I do not expect every new house to look like the one mouldering in the farmyard alongside it and I am all for individual expression in architecture, but surely there should be a modicum of compatibility.