Drumrane Villa

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Located on the east side of Drumrane Road at the junction with a minor road, close to the roadside with pedestrian entrance from Drumrane Road but vehicular access from minor road between outhouses. Land adjoining well kept farmland.

One and a half storey five bay wide house with two storey back return with two later small single storey extensions to rear, smooth rendered and cream painted walls with natural slated roofs. The end rooms or bays have full width canted bays to the main facade, with faceted roofs to match. The roof ridges over the bays runs at right angles to the roof over centre three bays so that externally these read as lateral pavilions. The almost central projecting entrance porch has a room above with gabled roof and a pair of small semi-circular windows. Two prominent rendered chimney stacks rise from the ridge of the central roof each adorned with two tall decorated pots. Most windows are of the two pane sash type, three number to each canted bay, one to the gabled entrance porch, the entrance door is in the side with a narrower sash window on the opposite side. On either side of the porch a sash window lighting the corridor hall and over each a straight cornice supported on moulded brackets. The bold eaves with ogee cast iron gutter runs along the front and sides and partly returns on the gables and neatly stopped. Cills to bays form continuous string course but not continued elsewhere. Rolled lead hip used on faceted roofs over bays. Other hips and ridges are clay tiles. Two storey back return has no architectural pretensions and is finished with two gables, chimney, no eaves, slated roof. The narrow garden runs the full length of house and beyond on each side and at the road boundary a low wall with coping, good decorative cast iron railing, a pedestrian gate and a vehicular gate.

To the north of the house a single storey stone built and slated cottage and outhouse, whitewashed, at right angles to it and linked by a screen wall. To the rear a two storey coach and barn built of stone, with brick trim and white washed. Over the centrally placed doors a gablet containing hoisting beam. These adjoining builds with the house to enclose a yard.

Historical information

A house with back return is shown on Ordnance Survey Sheet for 1848 with an adjacent cottage at right angles and the lane to the property further back passed between the two. The 1831 Ordnance Survey Sheet shows a similar arrangement but without the back return. Griffiths Valuation records a Robert C Irwin here in 1858. The house appears to have been extended and improved c1890s and the two storey coach house to the rear of the house built and the laneway changed. The present occupant (1998) stated that she was owner for the past 40 years and before that a Miss Oliver and she succeeded the Irwins. She said that Irwin drove by pony and trap to his draper business in Derry. His driver dwelt in the cottage. There was an Irwin, draper in Ferryquay Street Derry at the corner of Upper Linenhall Street which property was demolished when Woolworth & Co acquired it in 1960s. The details of the house suggests the Derry architect William Barker who did some work to the Presbyterian churches in the Glack Ward area.

References;
OSS 1831, 1848
Ordnance Survey Memoirs Vol 29
Derry Almanac 1874
Owner (1998)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A forceful late Victorian small villa of part single storey, one and a half and two storeys with bold form in the canted bays, low pitched and faceted slated roofs, strained symmetry, dominant chimney stacks, good eaves detail. It is of course facade architecture applied to main front and ends while the rear almost devoid of any architectural pretensions except for the short return of the eaves. The plan form is one room deep, probably dictated by the former building. However there is an attempt at creating pleasing proportioned rooms in the dining and sitting spaces, with good cornices, pelmeted timber cornices to curtains in bays, good fireplaces. The corridor hall is enhanced by the segmental arches, architraves and panelling and the interior, apart from the change of the dining room fireplace has not altered since it was improved.

It has good local interest. The cottage and outhouses add to the composition of the group.