Kilcoan House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey gabled roughcast house with a single storey wing to one side.

Main entrance faces east. East front four windows wide. Roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses between gable copings. Walls roughcast using crushed stones, white painted. Two chimneys, one on each gable, finished as walls; two plain pots each chimney, black; replacements. Cast iron guttering and downpipes. Front door wooden four-panelled replacement to original pattern, between narrow pilasters with sunk panels, set in a segmental-headed recess containing a fanlight with radial glazing bars; six panes of clear glass to fanlight each inscribed with a letter of the name Kilcoan, new, c 1989, panes originally coloured; reveals smooth rendered. Two windows to left of door on ground floor, one window to right, all timber sliding sash, vertically hung, 6 over 6, with horns, replacements to original pattern; painted cills, probably concrete replacements. Four windows to first floor, as on ground floor but 6 over 3.

Extending to right hand side of house, level with rear wall, a single storey return, continuing at lower ridge height to a long wing; walls and roofing as main house. One window in return, lighting kitchen, timber sliding sash. Three windows in wing, lighting new dining room.

South gable walling as front facade, blank except for one upper window as on front, with television satellite dish mounted above it.

Rear elevation: three first floor windows and one upper window at half-landing of stairs, as on front; one window to left on ground floor, as previous but 6 over 6, with French window to right, comprising doorway and two sidelights, timber, each with 15 small panes, all replacing two small original windows. To left, a gabled rear return with a half-door, 6 panes to upper leaf over ledged timber lower leaf; one window to left of door, as upper windows on rear elevation of house; roofline of almost flat pitch out from rear wall of house, then pitches down: not an original profile. West elevation of return has 2 small windows, 6 over 3, as previous. Wing extending from return at lower ridge height has rectangular opening with large sliding garage door to left hand side and small top hung window of 9 panes.

South gable of wing blank; south gable of house blank.

To the west of the rear return and wing, a long single storey slated gabled and whitewashed outbuilding.

To the front of the house, the entrance gateway comprising a pair of whitewashed rubble stone circular piers with conical caps, and a pair of flat-iron gates with scrolling finials, a new main entrance through a former gateway to a front field. Nearby to south-east an earlier entrance gateway of square harled stone and brick piers with ornamentally treated iron gates.

SETTING: The house stands on a level site in a very rural location, sited in a garden on a bend of the road which allows views of the house from various directions.

Historical information

Wing to north appears on OS map of 1832 but the house itself not until the OS map of 1857. House built by Arthur Hill.

References - Primary

1. OS Map 1832, Co Antrim 41
2. OS Map 1857, Co Antrim 41.

Secondary

1. C.E.B. Brett, Buildings of County Antrim (UAHS, Belfast, 1996), p 193.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

An example of a house in a vernacular Georgian style which presents an original appearance to the entrance front and sides and is conspicuously sited in a pleasant setting.