Alexander House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Large, relatively plain, two storey rendered and gabled gentleman’s ‘village’ residence of possible mid 18th century construction, but with a mid 19th century flat-roofed entrance porch and some front window openings enlarged c.1898. The property is set close to the end of a terrace and is abutted to the N side by a large two storey ‘service’ section which probably took its present form in 1898 when its roof level was undoubtedly raised and the small series of fretwork gables added to the front. To the rear of the house is a large U-shaped limestone-built gabled outbuilding, dating from 1830 (both service section and outbuilding are recorded separately - see HB13/10/041B & C). The whole ensemble is situated close to the S end of Caledon Main Street, with large garden to the SW.

The main house
The front elevation of the house faces roughly E and is symmetrical. To the centre of the high level ground floor is a tall flat roofed porch projection (probably not original- but added some time prior to c.1859), reached by a splayed flight of stone steps. The porch is rendered (like the rest of the façade) with a projecting cornice course. To the E face of the porch is the main entrance with plain sheeted double door surmounted by a large semicircular fanlight with ‘spoke’ tracery (i.e. the fanlight is broken into sectors). There is a stringcourse at the ‘springing’ level of the fanlight. The steps to the porch are edged with a low stone wall with coping, which supports simple wrought iron railings (which look 19th century- and miraculously survived the War effort!). The wall and railings continue around the front of the house enclosing paved areas with small light wells for the basement windows.

To the left of the porch is a narrow-ish sash window with horizontal glazing bars (2/2) and simple moulded surround. To the left of this is a much larger (i.e. broader) window with late-Victorian / Edwardian mullioned and transomed frame. To the right of the porch this window arrangement is mirrored. To basement level left side of the porch there are three small windows (only partly above ground level), each with of these windows has an early to mid 20th century [?metal] frame with a small stone-rimmed light well to front.

To the first floor the window arrangement repeats that to ground floor but with an additional window above the porch. These upper windows are marginally shorter than those to ground floor. There is a stringcourse above first floor window level.

The S gable is blank apart from two very small plain sash windows at attic level and a very small to the far left at basement level (now boarded). A tall stone wall (enclosing the rear garden) extends from the left (W) side of this gable. The N gable is largely covered by the two storey ‘service’ section, but is exposed at attic level where there is a very small window to left. This small window (which appears to have a sash frame) is partly cut across by the roofline of the service section. There may be another window like this one to right, however this half of the gable could not be seen.

The set at an intermediate level between basement and first floor roughly to the centre of the rear elevation is a low panelled and glazed doorway. To the left of this are two tall-ish sash windows with Georgian panes (6/6). To right is a single storey flat-roofed square bay in light-coloured sandstone, with cornice course and blocking course. To the W face of the bay there are four narrow lights each separated by a stone mullion. Each light has a sash frame with and horizontal glazing bars (all 2/2). To the short N and S faces of the bay there are single similar lights, but with four pane fixed frames to each. The bay is set on a broad, slightly raised base.

To the centre of the elevation is a large-ish semicircular headed half-landing level window with Georgian-paned sash frame (10/6). There are wrought-iron railings over this window (which look relatively old). To the first floor there are five sash windows with Georgian panes (all 6/6).

The façade (excepting the bay) is finished in unpainted lined render. The gabled roof is slated and has four small skylights to rear. There are two large rendered chimneystacks (one to each gable) with uniform pots. Cast iron rw goods.

Historical information

Caledon- a brief history
Caledon is a small village located in south-east Tyrone, close to the border with County Armagh, fourteen kilometres west of Armagh City, nineteen kilometres south of Dungannon. Pleasantly set on the River Blackwater in fertile rolling countryside, it is one of the most pleasing villages in Ulster, neat and attractive in appearance with many fine mature trees on its outskirts. In essence the village is late Georgian, many of its buildings dating from the 1820s and 30s, but its origins as a settlement can be traced to late medieval times.

Early history
The area within which Caledon is situated was originally known as the territory of ‘Hy-Bruin Archoill’, ‘the clan of Brian of Archoill’, which first appears in annals of the 320s and 330s. Later this name was shortened to ‘Muntir Birn’ (now Minterburn), or ‘the country of Brian’. Muntir Birn is mentioned in annals of 1120, 1166, 1172 and 1374, each entry recording the murder of the ruler of the territory. In the late medieval period the area came under the lordship of a branch of the powerful O’Neills of Tyrone, one of whom, John Buidhe O’Neill, is recorded in 1480 as having a castle at ‘Kinard’ (‘head/top of the hill’)- the original name of Caledon. The castle, which should perhaps be more correctly described as a large fortified house, stood on the rise close to the site of the present Cranogue House. It possessed strategic significance and occurs frequently in accounts of battles between the competing branches of the O’Neills in the later decades of the 1400s and the early 1500s, conflicts which also involved Lord Deputy Kildare (a kinsman of one of these septs), who besieged the stronghold in 1480 and 1500. In the latter year, the Annals of The Four Masters record that Kildare handed jurisdiction of the castle to his nephew, Turlough O’Neill. Turlough, the ‘tanist’ or heir to the headship of the wider O’Neill clan and ‘the best son of a lord of Ireland of his time’, died in 1502 and Kinard passed to his brother, John. Unlike Turlough, who had strongholds elsewhere, John appears to have actually taken up residence within the castle, establishing a stronghold for his descendants for the next century and a half.

The annals speak of a ‘town’ at Kinard during the 1500s. This probably amounted to a small collection of timber and thatch dwellings close to the castle, possibly on the site of the present village. A later map (by Josias Bodley and dating from c.1609) indicates that the settlement also possessed a church. In 1514, this small settlement appears to have been put to the torch and, in 1531, the castle itself was largely ‘broken’ or dismantled during a siege.

Sir Henry Oge O’Neill
In the latter years of the 1500s, Muntir Birn was under the lordship of one of its most able rulers, Henry Oge O’Neill. Henry was a son in law of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, the most powerful of Ulster’s Gaelic magnates. In 1594, Hugh took up arms against the growing influence of crown authority within Ulster, which had been undermining the old Gaelic order and his own position in particular. Because of his kinship to Tyrone and the location of his territory, Henry Oge was dragged into the conflict on Hugh’s side. His allegiance to Tyrone’s cause was never wholehearted, however, and by the early 1600s he had become a supporter of Queen Elizabeth. In reward for his services he was knighted and received a royal grant of his ancestral lands ‘at the rent of one horse and two spurs, or 40 shillings at election, payable at Michaelmas’.

In 1608, the town of Kinard was burnt by the forces of the rebellious Sir Cahir O’Doherty of Inishowen, a Gaelic lord who, unlike Sir Henry Oge O’Neill, chafed under the steady expansion of royal authority in the wake of Tyrone’s defeat. A water borne contingent of 400 rebels attacked and plundered an island fortress (or ‘crannog’) belonging to Sir Henry on the, now drained, Drommoragh Lough next to the castle, but the stronghold resisted.

O’Doherty’s rebellion (which eventually petered out in late summer 1608) convinced many in government circles that Ulster could only finally be brought to good order by a policy of land redistribution and the plantation of loyal English and Scots subjects. The earlier (August 1607) flight of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, who, like O’Doherty, felt it difficult to cope with the curbing of their traditional influence, left large tracts open to the fulfilment of these plans. Muntir Birn, however, like other areas in the hands of Gaelic lords loyal to the government, was exempt from this grand scheme and remained untouched.

The last of the O’Neills
Though it may have been excluded from the Plantation, Muntir Birn’s position was complicated by the fact that Sir Henry and his son and heir, Turlough, were both murdered whilst campaigning against Sir Cahir’s army, and the territory left in the hands of a minor, Sir Phelim Rua O’Neill- Henry’s grandson. In response to this, and fearing the development of a feud between Sir Henry’s surviving sons, Lord Deputy Chichester decided in 1611 that in the interests of preserving good order, the majority of the land should be divided amongst all of Henry’s remaining descendants. Thus Muntir Birn was split into portions of varying size, the largest of which, the ‘Manor of Kinard’ (with 500 acres of demesne land centred on the small ‘town’) was given to Phelim’s mother, Catherine Hovenden, who administered it during his minority. Catherine’s patent contained the right to hold a weekly market at Kinard as well as a yearly fair, on the 10th of June. (A later patent, granted by King Charles II to William Hamilton made provision for further fairs on the 10th of August and 30th of November.)

This fragmentation of Muntir Birn proved a short lived situation, however, for, upon reaching his majority Sir Phelim, embarked upon a process whereby he gradually succeeded in gaining control of the other lands granted to his relatives. By the late 1620s, therefore, Phelim, by an apparent mixture of ambition, money and force of personality, had amassed all of the territory formally in possession of his grandfather. This situation appears to have been quietly accepted by the Stuart government, who, in 1629, granted a new patent vesting in him the lands contained with Sir Henry’s original grant.

Phelim, who also became MP for Dungannon, appears to have either completely rebuilt or remodelled the old castle of Kinard into a slightly more domesticated fortified house of the bawn type and led the career of a high profile landowner of some importance. He was unable to manage his estates carefully, however, and this, coupled with his somewhat extravagant lifestyle, ran him into debt. To offset this he introduced new tenants (many of them English and Scots), who were able to pay higher rents, and mortgaged some of the townlands within the territory. In spite of these measures, by the later 1630s, his financial affairs had become increasingly precarious. It was because of these problems, coupled with the emergence of province wide religious and political tensions in the wake the Plantation, that this ‘light desperate young gentleman’ was induced to rise in rebellion in October 1641, an event which proved the touch paper for a general rising of the disgruntled Gaelic lords of Ulster and the beginning of a decade of warfare in Ireland.

Throughout the rising and the ensuing conflict, which witnessed civil war between the (ostensibly ‘Royalist’) Confederate Catholic lords and the Protestant/government interest (all closely bound up with the struggle between King Charles I and Parliament in Britain), Phelim O’Neill played a leading role on the Confederate side. As such Muntir Birn and the castle of Kinard were witness to much incident during the 1640s. Lord Caulfield, after being taken prisoner by Phelim at the beginning of the rising, was shot at the gates of the castle in early 1642. Later that year the castle was captured by English and Scots troops and partially burnt, with the town itself burnt by a contingent of the insurgent Irish army shortly afterwards. In 1649 the castle was burnt again and apparently totally destroyed. The River Blackwater was the scene of one of the reported atrocities of the rising, when at Easter 1642 Phelim is said to have drowned a number of his English and Scots tenants. Munro’s army, brandishing ‘great silken banners’, encamped in Muntir Birn in June 1646, shortly before their defeat at the hands of the Confederate Irish force at Benburb.

With the arrival of Cromwell in Ireland in 1649, and the gradual defeat of the Confederate cause at the hands of his Parliamentarian troops during the early 1650s, Phelim O’Neill ‘the chiefe traytor of all Ireland’, became a fugitive. He fled to his island stronghold on Dromorragh Lough where he remained until betrayed in early 1653. From here he was taken to Dublin and executed, his lands of Muntir Birn confiscated by the Commonwealth government.

The Hamiltons and after
Because Muntir Birn had been burdened by its late owner’s heavy mortgages, it was not disposed of until after the Restoration, when it was granted to Captain William Hamilton. Hamilton was a distant relative of the Abercorn family, who as a royalist officer had fought in Ireland, Scotland and England. He built himself a house close to Kinard, which is undoubtedly the same building described by later incumbent, Lord Orrery in 1738 as ‘old, low, and though full of rooms, not very large’. The house and the estate lands surrounding it became known as ‘Caledon’, a name possibly inspired its owner’s Scottish origins (though this is in no way certain). As the estate village, Kinard eventually adopted the name also.

William died in 1674 and was succeeded by his son John, who sat as MP for Dungannon in the 1690s and Augher in 1703. John built a new church at Caledon in c.1683 (on the site of the old late medieval one), a building which was badly damaged by Jacobite troops a few years later, but restored by 1691. We have little source material concerning Caledon during this period, however the village is indicated on Herman Moll’s 1714 map of Ireland, where it is marked (as ‘Kinnard at Callidon’) along the road from Monaghan to Dungannon, suggesting that the axis of the village was north/south at this time.

After the death of John Hamilton’s young son and heir, William, the Caledon estate passed to his daughter, Margaret. In 1738 Margaret Hamilton married the 5th Earl of Orrery. Lord Orrery was the biographer of Jonathan Swift and friend of Dr Johnson, as well as an improving landlord who did much to beautify the gardens around his newly acquired residence, through planting and the addition of ornamental buildings and statues. His efforts to create a Rococo style garden along continental lines, however, almost led him into trouble with his tenants, who, seeing the ‘heathen statues and writing upon them certain words in an unknown language [i.e. Latin]…suspected me for a Papist, and my statues had been demolished, my woods burnt and my throat cut, had I not suddenly placed a seat under a holly bush with this plain inscription “Sit Down and Welcome”. I have assured them that all the Latin mottoes are to this purpose, and that in the places where they cannot sit down, I have desired them in the old Norman dialect to go to the lodge and whiskey’. In 1747 he constructed a folly-like ‘bone house’ in the garden (actually faced which ox bones), which he intended should ‘strike the Caledonians with wonder and amazement’. It is the only element of his garden ornamentation to survive to the present day.

On the death of his kinsman, Richard 4th Earl of Cork in 1753, Lord Orrery became Earl of Cork and Orrery. His wife Margaret died in 1758 and, with the death of the Earl himself in 1762, the Caledon estate passed to their son, Edmund. It is during the period of Edmund’s tenure that the earliest documentation concerning the modern village of Caledon dates. This includes a copy a thick volume entitled Transactions relating to the Caledon Estate since the grant thereof to William Hamilton Esq. by King Charles 2nd which contains a summary of leases, dating from the late 1730s onwards, which give odd glimpses to the development of the settlement. One of these, dating from May 1737 and concerning ground ‘lying on ye right and left of ye road leading to Caledon mill, and two parks on the road leading to Tullynashane’, required leasee John Pringle to build ‘six dwelling houses, each 35ft long, 20ft wide and 10ft high’, whilst another (of August 1750) mentions a bleach green ‘on ye to right hand of the road leading from Caledon to Caledon Bridge’, the leasee of which was ‘bleach one webb of linnen cloth yearly for ye Earl of Orrery and to bleach all linnen cloth for the tenants of the Caledon Estate at as reasonable a price as can be done elsewhere’. A further lease of c.1746 tells us that the forerunner of the present Mill Street (then termed ‘The Road to the Bason’) was cut around this time from land which previously contained the glebe garden. Other documents include a rent roll of 1772 which lists 47 individual tenements and leases of 1773-76, several of which mention ‘premises in [the] street of Caledon’ and ‘premises on [the] east side of [the] street of Caledon’.

Taylor’s and Skinner’s road map of 1777 gives a rough indication of the extent of the village at this time, with evidence of buildings along what is now Main Street and the Church Hill/Castle Lane axis (the Dynan Road, which appears to have been merely a narrow lane at this time, is not shown). The church, rebuilt by Rev. Congreave in 1768-69 is also indicated on the map, as is what appears to be the original Caledon House built by the Hamiltons. Rev John Wesley, the founder of Methodism and friend of Congreave, visited Caledon in 1769, preached at the newly rebuilt church and stayed at Congreave’s rectory, which appears to have been located on the opposite side of the Dungannon Road from the churchyard. He paid a second visit two years later when he preached in the open air and a third in 1785, by which time he had use of a ‘preaching house’.

The Alexanders and the development of Caledon
By the time of Wesley’s third visit, the Caledon estate had again changed ownership, the Earl of Cork and Orrery having sold it to James Alexander in 1776 for £96,400. This new landlord was the second son of Alderman Nathaniel Alexander of Londonderry. He made his fortune in the service of the East India Company during the 1750s and 60s, returning to Ireland in 1772 worth probably over £250,000. With this money, he proceeded to accumulate estates in Counties Donegal, Londonderry, and Antrim as well as Caledon, to which he added neighbouring townlands (some bought outright, some leased) in both Tyrone and Armagh. In 1779 he built a new classical mansion, to designs by Thomas Cooley, either on the site of, or a short distance from, the old Hamilton residence. James sat as MP for Londonderry between 1774 and 1790 and was also sheriff of Co. Tyrone (1780) and Armagh (1781). In 1790, he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Caledon, becoming Viscount Caledon in 1797 and finally Earl of Caledon in 1800.

James Alexander, 1st Earl of Caledon died in 1802 and was succeeded by his son, Du Pre. The 2nd Earl served as the first governor of the Cape of Good Hope between 1806 and 1811, where the Caledon River and the District of Caledon are named after him. During his absence he commissioned John Nash to extend and refurbish Caledon House. In 1813 the Earl had Caledon village itself surveyed by Robert Barns. Barns’ pictorial plan shows that by this stage what is now Main Street was flanked with a variety of one and two storey stone built houses, with a scattering of similar buildings along the present Castle Lane and Church Hill. The church, with its tower of 1785 and spire of 1808 is shown, and a cluster of small dwellings fronting onto what was to become Mill Street, the aforementioned ‘Road to the Bason’. A small school house, built by Rev Congreve in 1776, was situated on the north side of Church Hill (roughly where the present school now stands) and a tan yard stood next to the present Dynan Road, then named ‘Henderson’s Row’. The Derrycourtney Road had not yet been cut, what was to be its eastern end then taken up with long plots at the rear of the houses on the west side of Main Street.

In the two decades following Barns’ survey, Caledon was to be transformed from what appears to have been an unremarkable ‘mean village’ into an attractive and thriving one. The main impetus for this transformation occurred in 1816 when the village became the headquarters of the Royal Tyrone Militia, an event which enhanced both Caledon’s social standing and economic prospects, and led to the 2nd Earl (the colonel of the militia) embarking on an extensive rebuilding programme. On the east side of Main Street, the impressive Bank Terrace and Estate Terrace both appear to have been completed prior to 1834, and to the west, the large complex including the ‘neat and substantial’ former court/market house, hotel and dispensary was added in 1822, to designs by William Murray and at a cost of £3,000. Adjoining this, to the south, the large house formerly belonging to the Pringle family was refitted for use as the headquarters of the militia itself, and, in 1823, the flour mill was built on the south side of what was to become ‘Mill Street’. The Earl made ‘additions and improvements’ to the church in 1828 and the growing local Presbyterian and Methodist congregations added their own places of worship to the village in 1824 and 1834 respectively. To the west, Dromorragh Lough was drained and, close by, in a somewhat symbolic sweeping away of the last vestiges of the old Kinard, the remains of the O’Neill fortified residence were removed.

The valuation town plan of c.1833 and the Ordnance Survey map of 1834 show that Caledon had taken on much of its present plan, and road network, by this date. It had also reached what, in many respects, was to be its heyday. The compilers of the 1835 Ordnance Survey Memoirs were among many impressed visitors. They reported that Lord Caledon was ‘sparing no expense in improvements’ and that the village had ‘a pleasing regular appearance…the predominance of slated roofs and the regularity of its masonry [giving it] from some points the appearance rather of the portion of a large town than the entire of a village’. Its limestone built, mostly two storey, houses in particular displayed a ‘peculiar neatness’. The new flour mill, which was driven by two 18 foot water wheels and a subsidiary 25 horsepower steam engine, was ‘among the most extensive of the class in the kingdom’, grinding 9000 tons of wheat annually and supplying ‘the country from Belfast to Lough Erne’. There was a market every Saturday, they further reported, and monthly fairs, the ‘neat barrack’ housed 24 militiamen, the hotel and post house were both ‘excellent’. The valuation returns of December 1836 reveal just how prosperous Caledon was during this period, with 99 out of its roughly 125 buildings above the then rateable threshold of £3. Not many other rural centres could boast such a statistics.

By 1837, the villagers, who according to the Memoir writers did ‘not appear to be very fond of amusements or remarkably hospitable’, numbered well over 1,000. In a fitting tribute to the ‘highly praiseworthy exertions’ made by the 2nd Earl on the behalf of their community, they erected a monumental column to his memory shortly after his death in 1839.

The later 19th century to the present
Despite the death of its energetic patron and the departure of the militia in 1855, Caledon continued to prosper. The Ulster canal, constructed c.1837-40, passed close to the village and though the building boom witnessed under the 2nd Earl slowed, a new school was erected in 1852, an infant school established around the same time, with the picturesque houses of Mill Terrace constructed in c.1860. A branch of the Belfast Bank was established prior to 1870.

During the latter decade, the flour mill, which by this date also operated as a flax mill, finally closed, but was reopened in 1880 as a factory for the manufacture of woollen and tweed cloth (‘The Caledon Woollen Mills’) under the ownership of William Oliver Sherrard. The village was given a further boost in 1887 when it became part of the Clogher Valley Tramway network, an unusual narrow gauge railway which followed transatlantic and New Zealand practice by running its tracks through the main streets of towns. A small station was built a mile south of the village and, by the early mid 1890s (by which time the company changed its name to the ‘Clogher Valley Railway’), trains ran along Main Street and the Aughnacloy Road three to four times a day. Visitors continued to be impressed, Slater’s Directory of 1870 noting the village’s ‘well built…pleasing appearance’ and proclaiming that it was ‘equalled by few towns of its size, in the north of Ireland, for beauty and cleanliness’ and the Omagh Almanac and Co Tyrone Directory extolling ‘the charm of its surroundings, the excellence of its buildings and the general neatness of its aspect’. In the latter decades of the century, the 4th Earl stocked the parklands around Caledon House with black bear and wapiti, brought from his ranching and hunting days in the United States.

By 1891 Caledon could still boast the relatively high population of roughly 800, but by 1910 this had dropped to 610 and c.540 by the 1940s, a decline hastened by the closure of the woollen mills in 1930. The Clogher Valley Railway ceased to operate in 1941 and, by 1971, the population had fallen to roughly 360. By the final decades of the 20th century the village had assumed the role of a dormitory settlement, providing a small number of shops and community facilities for the local area, but looking towards Armagh for the bulk of its employment and major services. In spite of its decline in fortunes, however, Caledon still retains most of its late Georgian appearance and the picturesque charm which so impressed the visitors of the 1830s.

Alexander House
The earliest direct reference to the house would appear to be Robert Barn’s 1813 map of Caledon, which depicts a large two storey house on this site with what appears to be a flight of steps leading to the door. We have no proof, of course that this is indeed the present house, however, for though the property is undoubtedly that shown on the valuation map of 1838, the accompanying valuation book (unusually) gives no details as to its age. Nonetheless there are some important pieces of information which suggest that the building dates from well before 1813, and who it may have been built for.

Barn’s map tells us that the property belonged to a John Pringle in 1813. The Pringle family held the leases of much property within Caledon from at least 1737 to the early 1800s, mostly on the western side of the street. A lease of 1737 specifically stipulates that an earlier John Pringle ‘build six dwelling houses each 35ft long…20ft wide and 10ft high and office houses comfortable’. As with many such stipulations, the dimensions given were usually minimum requirements, with the dwellings actually built exceeding them. Thus it is possible, that the present Alexander House was built in or closely after this date. This suggestion is supported by other evidence. Firstly, successive members of the Pringle family acted as agents for the owners of Caledon from the 1776 at least, as agents usually lived in a relatively high status residence- it is feasible to suggest that the house was standing at this date. Secondly, certain elements of the detailing to the house appear early to mid 18th century, most notably the staircase and the architraves. Thus it is probable that this house was built by the Pringle family, that it served as the agent’s residence from the beginning (as it definitely did for much of the 19th century), and that it may date from the mid 1700s.

The last Pringle owner of the house appears to have been the aforementioned John, who died c.1815. He was followed as resident (and as agent) by Henry Leslie Prentice, who is listed as such in the valuation of 1838 and whose family remained there until the 1870s. The Prentices were followed in the later 19th and early 20th century by various members of the Alexander family, relations of the Earls of Caledon.

The property is shown on the 1838 valuation map along with the service section to the north and the outbuilding complex to the rear. The service section is also indicated on Barn’s 1813 map, but we know from its datestone that the outbuilding (which mainly contained stables) appeared in 1830. By 1860, when the second valuation map was produced, the porch had been added to the front of the house.

In the later 1800s significant alterations were made to property with the large return added to the rear of the service section, some windows to the front of the house enlarged and the square bay added to the rear. Judging from the style of these changes (i.e. the mullioned and transomed window frames, the fretted gables to the service section etc.) and the information supplied by the annual valuation revision books, it would appear that they were carried out in 1898. The large return, however, has the appearance of being slightly earlier (it seems to be completely built of rubble), but there is no documentary evidence to support this. It is probable that the 1898 changes involved the heightening of the service section, for its front windows are awkwardly close to the eaves, its roofline cuts across an attic window to the house, and the uppermost portions of the walls are in brick rather than stone.

Subsquent changes to the property appear to have been largely internal with the large opening in the living room wall (linking it with the kitchen) inserted some time in the mid 1900s and most of the fireplaces removed. In recent years the service section has been used mainly as a store.

References- Primary sources
1 ‘Annals of Ulster’, ed. And trans. W.M. Hemmessy and B. MacCarthy, 4 vols (Dublin, 1887-1901)
2 ‘Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters’, ed. And trans. J. O’Donovan, 7 vols (Dublin, 1851)
3 PRONI T.2543 Sir Josias Bodley’s plantation maps of the baronies in the escheated counties of Armagh, Cavan,
Donegal, Fermanagh, Tyrone and south Londonderry c.1609 [copies]
4 PRONI D.1552 ‘Returns of fairs and markets…showing towns in which markets are held with particulars to patents etc.’
5 PRONI D.2433 Caledon Papers [See individual
references]
6 PRONI D.2433/A/5/3 Caledon Papers ‘Transactions relating to the Caledon Estate since the grant thereof to William Hamilton Esq. by King Charles 2nd’ (Summaries of various, mainly early to mid 18th century, leases.)
7 New map of Ireland by Herman Moll,1714 [Reprinted in ‘Irish Stone bridges’ by Peter O’Keefe and Tom Simington
(Irish Academic Press 1991)]
8 PRONI D.2433/A/1/85/1 Caledon Papers Lease from the Earl of Cork & Orrery to William Pringle of a tenement and garden in Caledon, 1 June 1773
9 ‘Taylor’s and Skinner’s Maps of the roads of Ireland’ (Dublin, 1777)
10 ‘The post chaise companion or traveller’s directory through Ireland’ (3rd ed. Dublin, 1803)
11 PRONI D.2433/A/13/7/1 Caledon Papers ‘A map and survey of tenements and gardens in the town of Calidon by Robt. Barns’, 1813
12 PRONI OS/6/6/67/1 OS map 1st ed. 1834, Co Tyrone sh.67
13 ‘Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland vol.20: Parishes of County Tyrone II’, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams
(QUB 1993)
14 PRONI VAL/1D/6/8 Valuation town plan of Caledon (c.1833-38)
15 PRONI VAL/1B/66c First valuation, Parish of Aghaloo (1836-38)
16 ‘Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary’ (1837)
17 ‘Parliamentary gazetteer of Ireland vol.I’ (Dublin 1843-44)
18 ‘Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory’ Vols.1-21, 1852-1900, (Belfast, Henderson [1852-65], Belfast News-Letter [1865- ])
19 PRONI OS/6/6/67/2 OS map 1st rev c.1857, Co Tyrone sh.67
20 PRONI VAL/2B/6/6C Second valuation, Parish of Aghaloo (1859) [in print]
21 PRONI VAL/2D/6/14 Valuation town plan of Caledon (1859)
22 ‘Slater’s Royal National Commercial Directory of Ireland’ (Manchester 1870)
23 PRONI VAL/12B/38/8b-f Annual valuation revision books, 1864-1929
24 PRONI VAL/12E/164/1 Valuation town plan of Caledon, 1905 [-1909]
25 PRONI OS/65/1 OS town plan of Caledon (1907)
26 PRONI D.2433/A/13/51/1 Caledon Papers Plan for ‘alterations to Alexander House, Caledon’, ?c.1910-20
27 PRONI VAL/3G/136/2 Valuation town plan of Caledon (1935-54)
28 EHS Records of the first survey of buildings of historical and architectural interest in Caledon ward (1971)

Secondary sources
1 Rev George Hill ‘An historical account of the Plantation in Ulster’ (Dublin 1877)
2 Thomas Matthews ‘The O’Neills of Ulster vol.II’ (Dublin 1907)
3 John Johnston Marshall ‘History of the territory of Munterburn and town of Caledon’ (Dungannon, Tyrone Printing Co., 1923)
4 D.B. McNeill ‘Ulster tramways and light railways- Transport handbook No.1’ (Belfast 1956)
5 W.A. McCutcheon ‘The industrial archaeology of Northern Ireland’ (Belfast HMSO 1980)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Large, relatively plain, two storey rendered and gabled gentleman’s ‘village’ residence of possible mid 18th century construction, but with a mid 19th century flat-roofed entrance porch and some front window openings enlarged c.1898. The property is set close to the end of a terrace and is abutted to the N side by a large two storey ‘service’ section which probably took its present form in 1898 when its roof level was undoubtedly raised and the small series of fretwork gables added to the front. To the rear of the house is a large U-shaped limestone-built gabled outbuilding, dating from 1830. [Both the service section and the outbuilding are recorded separately.] Thie building is of special interest for its style, proportion,setting, internal quality and important contribution to the village of Caledon