Garden Cottage

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Favor Royal demesne has a number of features of interest. Main entrance to Favor Royal Road has a single storey lodge on NW side of the Favour Royal Road, and on SE side are the main gates (both HB13/03/005), there are also bridges (HB13/03/007, and HB13/03/0026), main house and yards (HB13/03/004), outer yard (HB13/03/027), a walled garden (HB13/03/012), pigsty and weigh house (HB13/03/025).

Demesne is bounded to the N by the river Blackwater, to the E by the Derrymeen Road, to the S by the border with Co Monaghan, and to the W by the church of St. Mary’s Portclare, and to the NW by the Favour Royal Road. The main house itself is a middle sized Tudor Manorial Style building house built 1825.

Facing E, just to SE of the main house (HB13/03/004), this picturesque garden cottage is single storey and three bays wide.

Walls are rendered random rubble. Each of its three bays is different in scale and design and has a separate pitched natural slate roof. The left one is much shallower than the other two. To its rear, abutting the central bay, is a circular tower.

The detailing of the left bay seems to be of a later date than that to the other two bays. Its roof has a red brick chimney at left. Its front elevation has 2/2 sliding sash window with horns and brick reveals.

Centre bay is one and half storeys high. It has a pitched natural slate roof has deep overhanging eaves supported on pairs of decorative timber brackets. There are two red brick chimneys to front right; one is set on an angle with the front elevation. Its front elevation has a pair of 4/4 sliding sashes (as those to main house) set in a flush stone architrave. The exposed part of its left gable has a 4/4 exposed box sliding sash window. The exposed portion of its right gable has a window opening to right of the central chimney breast (window gone).

Right bay has a pitched natural slate roof, which cat slides as a porch with timber eaves to front supported on two plain tapering stone columns. Below the porch is a canted bay window, with brick dressings and stone cill. Its window to front is missing and cheeks have 4/4 sliding sashes.

Left gable of the cottage is blank.

Rear elevation of left bay has a small narrow and damaged lattice window at right end. Central bay has a pair of narrow timber doors each with six glazed panels, over is a moulded cornice (possibly salvaged from elsewhere). The gable to right, on party wall with right bay, is a two-storey round tower. It has a leaded conical roof and walls are rendered brick with narrow lattice arrow-loop windows at various levels. Left bay has a 2/2 (vertically divided) window set to left and a t+g sheeted door (now collapsed) to right.

Right gable of cottage has a large window opening to centre (window gone). To its right, on the cheek of the rear lean-to, is smaller window with lead lattice casement.

Outside the cottage, leaning against its right gable, is a sandstone plaque. It has a moulded architrave and the central panel is raised and fielded. The inscription is quite long and mostly illegible although it begins with: “This house built by Order of / Grand Jury at Omagh 1732 /”…and mentions."W. Edwards Overseer…”

To the front of the cottage the hillside steps down in a number of man made terraces towards the main house.

Historical information

The 1834 OS map shows the demesne and most of its features, including this cottage, which is smaller than it is today. The right bay may predate the rest and even the 1825 house.

The family photographs in PRONI mainly show family members, a number however show the house and other estate features. One large 19thC print of a cow shows the cottage in the background, with terraced lawns to its front. Although not consulted in detail, the Moutray family papers in PRONI are a wide and interesting range of documents from land leases to personal diaries.

Primary Sources:
1. 1st edition 6” OS map Tyrone sheet 59 (1834).
2. “Moutray Family Photographs” PRONI D/2023/15/1.

Secondary Sources:
1. A. Rowan “North West Ulster” Penguin, 1979, p292.
2. J.A.K. Dean “The Gate lodges of Ulster” (Belfast, 1994), p143.
3. D.Chart (ed) “Preliminary Survey of the Ancient Monuments of N.I.” 1940, p255.
4. “The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland”, 1883-4, p133.
5. J. Johnston “In the Days of the Clougher Valley: Photographs of the Clougher Valley Railway 1887-1942” (Belfast) 1987, pp80,81.
6. Moutray family papers PRONI D/2023.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
W. Northern Ireland/International Interest

Evaluation

This is a well designed picturesque estate cottage, located to the immediate SE of the main house, with which it also has group value.