Market House

The Market House in Stradbally, Co Laois is an open shelter of very distinctive pagoda-roof design, built in 1899 of steel construction on the Market Square of the town as a memorial to Dr William Perceval, a respected local doctor who had died earlier the same year. The building is included in the Record of Protected Structures (RPS) in the Laois County Development Plan with reference number 710. The Market House is unique for this building type in Ireland. Though other commemorative market houses exist, the building departs from the normal configuration of a two-storey building with open ground level, and takes its reference rather from the larger covered market halls seen in nineteenth century cities. The building is an uncommon example of the use of corrugated iron for a public building in an Irish town, and is an architecturally significant example of a pagoda roof, a form derived from the Far East which was particularly suited to the properties of corrugated iron.