15 Gorteade Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Small, mildly picturesque 1½ storey house of c.1889-92 with large porch, small gabled half-dormers and an overhanging roof. The property is set on the E side of Gorteade Road, just E of the mill village of Upperlands.

The front elevation of the main section of the house faces S and is symmetrical. To the centre of the ground floor is a relatively large projecting flat roofed porch. To the front (S) face of this there is a mid 20th century panelled and glazed door with glazed area now boarded over. To both the E and W faces of the porch there is a small window, both of which are boarded over (all ground floor windows are covered likewise). The porch has a mono-pitched roof with a very shallow pitch. The roof appears to be covered in corrugated iron. Originally the roof may have been flat, the present roof has been placed over it, but the parapet of the original roof is still visible.

To either side of the porch (on main building) there is a window. Above and close to the centre are two small half-dormers with decorative pierced barges and plain sash windows with segmental headed upper lights.

To the upper floor of the W gable there are two semicircular headed windows with plain sash frames.

To the E gable there is a large lean-to with a smaller lean-to projecting from its E side. The larger lean-to has a boarded over door and window its S face, with a window to the S face of the smaller lean-to. There is another window to the N face of the smaller lean-to.

To the rear elevation of the main house there are two ground floor windows.

The main house and the lean-tos are finished in unpainted roughcast, with that to the main house particularly rough and messy looking in parts. The window sills to the main house are in painted brick. The main roof is gabled and has an overhang with decorative pierced barges. Both the main roof and those to the lean-tos are slated. Two rendered chimneystacks with coping (one to each gable). Cast iron and PVC rw goods.

To the S of the house is a sizeable garden. To the W (to the roadside) there is a vehicle gateway and pedestrian gate. The latter is wrought iron and appears original, the former probably early to mid 20th century.

Historical information

This house appears for the first time on the OS 6in map of 1905. A trawl through the annual valuation revision books shows that the first new houses to appear in this area after 1864 were built in 1889 with others following in 1892, all built on land belonging to the Clark family, owners of Upperlands Mill. Because of the lack of an accompanying valuation map it is difficult to say which of these two dates relate to the construction of the property.

The smaller of the lean-tos is not original.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI VAL/12B/34/27a-g Annual valuation revision notebooks, Maghera parish etc., 1864-1923
2 PRONI OS/6/5/32/3 OS map 6in County Series, Co Londonderry Sheet 32, 1905

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Small, mildly picturesque 1½ storey house of c.1889-92 with large porch, small gabled half-dormers, roughcast façade and an overhanging roof. To the east gable is a lean-to projection. Whilst the building is not without merit it does not meet the requirement of "special" architectural or historic interest to merit listing.