A bishop, two stuccodores, c. 1735
Riverstown House and the Lafranchini ceiling
Riverstown House was built for Jemmett Browne, who became Bishop of Cork in 1745 and later Archbishop of Tuam. The house probably dates from the mid-1730s, with a hopper dated 1753 marking later alterations. Its treasure is the dining-room plasterwork: high-relief figurative stucco by Paolo and Filippo Lafranchini, the Swiss-Italian brothers who came to Ireland in 1738 and decorated some of the finest ceilings in the country. To find their work in a modest house outside Cork, rather than a Dublin townhouse, is the surprise. The house was rescued from decay in the 1960s and is still privately lived in, opening under Revenue's Section 482 scheme on set afternoons from May to September. Check the dates before you drive out.
Flour, paper, flax and wool
The mills on the Glashaboy
In the 1800s Glanmire was a small but properly industrialised place. The Glashaboy turned a string of mills - flour, paper, flax and a woollen industry - and the river that now looks purely scenic was the engine of the valley. The work is gone, but the geography it left is still readable: the mill races, the bridge at Riverstown from around 1760, and the tight road pattern that follows the water rather than the contours. Glanmire's Heritage Society lays this out on three signed walks - the Sallybrook, the Glashaboy and the Rathcooney loops - each one tracing the villages, the industries and the people who ran them.
A church site since 1291
Rathcooney and the old parish
Long before the mills, this was an Early Christian parish. The church site at Rathcooney is recorded as far back as 1291, and local tradition links the glen to Brian of Glanmire, a kinsman of Brian Boru. Two later churches anchor the modern village: Saint Michael's, reopened in 1808 and celebrating its bicentenary in 2008, and Saint Joseph's, dedicated in 1837. None of this is on the standard Cork tourist trail, which is rather the point of mentioning it.