11 Tartnakilly Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey three structural bay farmhouse four windows long, with white washed walls, slate roof and adjoining two storey barn of similar height and size. Building derelict, and facing north east onto an overgrown garden. Upper floor windows are nine pane sashes in the Georgian style. Ground floor windows are six pane sashes in the Victorian style with the central pane wider than the sides. Roof: natural slate, chimneys on gables, in brick. Barn extends building to north west. It is similarly finished though slates are of a different colour. There is a central door with single opening above. The door to the house is on the second bay from the south east gable. It has no fanlight and is matchboarded. Its head aligns with the window openings.

The barn was formerly a threshing mill and a cobbled turning circle for a horse remains in the undergrowth in front of the building. On its north west gable is a small monopitched single storey store. To the rear is a large stone buttress. Between, on the centre point of the facade, is a door at ground level and a blocked up window above.

The rear of the house reveals a two bay kitchen extension with monopitch roof joining to the eaves of the main building. The extension is in brick. To the north west is a small two pane sash at ground level and a door under the eaves. The barn has two doors slightly off line and one to each floor. There is a small, blocked window.

This facade faces a farmyard of buildings still in use. A single storey brick barn to the south was a former dairy and retains much equipment in the undergrowth to the rear (according to its owner).

The south east gable of the house is blank.

Historical information

Building first indicated on the 1848 Ordnance Survey Map. A road connects the front of the house to Tartnakelly Road and the farmyard is without its present building. The barn is indicated but it has a projection suggesting it has been renovated since. The 1858 Griffiths Valuation lists the tenant of the house as Mr William Hemphill renting from Ogilby (of Pelipar Dungiven): ‘Caretakers house, offices and land value of buildings £3.15s.0d. The Hemphills lived in the house until the 1950s when it became the property of a Mrs Oliver. The present owner (1998) bought the house and farm from her in the mid 1980s.

References:

Ordnance Survey Maps 1831 & 1848
Griffiths Valuation 1858
Owner (1998)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

House of a large tenant farmer from the mid Victorian era. Very interesting as a social snapshot of a farmer with a little more money than contemporaries. Classical detail and architectural effort put into the formal living room. Vernacular details in the kitchen. Important architecturally for the wealth of surviving detail. The fireplace in particular is a rare survivor of the evolutionary stage between open fire cooking and the development of the range. The " borrowed light " detail is also unusual and interesting - was it employed for security or because the ceilings are low? The Victorian windows to the ground floor reflect the modernising impulse that had panelled windows and doors in the living room. The adjoining barn and surroundings is also of industrial archaeological interest. For a vernacular building the house is reasonably well proportioned. Unfortunately the building is too derelict to list.