FORMER DERRYKEVAN POST OFFICE, 134 DUNGANNON ROAD, PORTADOWN, CRAIGAVON, BT62 1LH

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single-storey, mud-walled, hearth-lobby vernacular house of pre-1835 construction, latterly also a post office. The property is located on the SW side of Dungannon Road, right next to a modern garage complex, about 6km NW of Portadown, and is set significantly below road level due to the successive re-layering of the latter’s surface.

The building is rectangular gable-ended structure with a small porch to the NE-facing front. The walls are finished in painted roughcast, with the porch in plain painted render. The roof structure is original, being constructed from roughly-hewn timber and thatched; this is now covered in corrugated metal with saw-tooth clay ridge tiles. There are three brick chimneystacks, (one to each gable, the other NW of centre), all of which appear to be 20th century, and uPVC RW goods with metal fixings.

The front elevation is asymmetrical. To the right of centre is the small, gabled projecting porch which has a sheeted timber door. To left of this are three small unevenly-spaced windows with another window to the right, all with stone sills and sash frames with thick boxes and vertical margin panes. Above the second window from the left is a small painted timber sign with ‘Derrykevan Post Office’ thereon, and to the immediate right of the same window is a small boarded up recess which previously held a wall-mounted post box (which although removed has been retained by the owners). The gables are blank. The SW-facing rear elevation has three unevenly-spaced windows, as front, with a sheeted timber door to the right, and next to this, to far right, is a slightly enlarged window opening with c.1960s timber casement frame. Extending from the rear wall, to the N side is short stretch of walling in the same roughcast, which terminates in a large recent-looking rendered gate pier with modern metal gate.

The large yard to the rear of the house is covered in relatively recently-laid concrete. To the front of the building is a relatively narrow flagged space, bounded, to the roadside, by a retaining wall topped with railings. There are side-gates at each gable to the front; simple painted masonry walling and decorative wrought iron gate to NW and simple painted masonry piers and similar gate to SE. Next to the NW gable are three large plastic glass recycling receptacles, whilst a metre or two to the SE is a partially rendered, partially brick-finished shed with mono-pitched corrugated roof. Attached to this is a smaller building, originally a pig crew, in brick with round arch-headed opening and a similar roof.

Historical information

The building appears uncaptioned on its current footprint on the original OS 6" map of 1835 but it was not valued above £5 and was not included in the Townland Valuation. The second edition map of 1863-64 the property shows the property more clearly with a narrow plot running southwest containing the garden and three fields accessed and bounded by a lane to the north side which leads on into a section of bogland to the southwest shared by the neighbouring plots. The immediate garden around the house is split in two and there is a line of trees to the boundary to the property to the south, and a small shed. The fields are divided by drainage ditches which run towards a larger channel to the southwest captioned as “bog drain” on the 1835 map - these remain evident on the landscape today. By the third edition of 1905-07 the small shed with corrugated iron roof immediately east of the house had been built. The sequence of drainage ditches had also been changed and extended with the acquisition of land in the neighbouring plot and bridges built over them.

The 25" map of the late twentieth century has the building captioned as a Post Office for the first time, with a TCB (telephone kisok - now gone) to the northwest corner. It also shows ancillary structures roughly on the plan of the present units to the south of the house but these have since been replaced.

In the early-nineteenth century, the townland of Derrykeevan was owned by Henry Stanley, a doctor who lived in Portadown on Church Street and later Annagh Terrace. This property was valued at £4 15 shillings in 1863, rising to £5 in 1871, and leased from Stanley by a man called William Wright, who, along with other family members, held other leases nearby in the same townland. Henry Stanley died c.1889 and was succeeded by his son John Robinson Stanley. Around 1891, Wright took the lease of the adjoining property to the southeast, but map evidence suggests the neighbouring house itself was demolished by 1896 when Wright’s lease valuation only lists the land. William was succeeded by George Wright in 1903 who bought the property from Stanley in 1913 through the Land Act of 1903. He still held the lease in 1920 and the property value remained unchanged at £5.

The building served as a post office from at least 1907 when Derrykevan Post Office is listed in the Great Britain Post Office Guide. During recent years the Wright family developed the site culminating in the present Eurospar, petrol station and retail units, when it is assumed the Post Office was relocated.

References

Primary sources
1. PRONI OS/6/1/60/1 Ordnance Survey First Edition (1835)
2. PRONI OS/6/1/60/2 Ordnance Survey Second Edition (1863)
3. PRONI OS/6/1/60/3 Ordnance Survey Third Edition (1905)
4. PRONI VAL/12/B/14/15A-E Annual Revisions (1864-1929)

Online sources
1 http://www.thebrassbuddha.net/bsn/?cat=4
2 http://www.lurganancestry.com/slaters1881portp7.htm
3 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=O6xAAQAAMAAJ

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
D. Plan Form
F. Structural System
H-. Alterations detracting from building
I. Quality and survival of Interior

Criteria for listing: historic interest

W. Northern Ireland/International Interest
R. Age
Z. Rarity
S. Authenticity
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

The former Derrykeevan Post Office is a single-storey mud-walled vernacular dwelling with thatched roof under tin, located on a plot which sits below the current road level on the SW side of Dungannon Road, south of Portadown. The building is a notable example of a traditionally constructed dwelling, conforming to the hearth-lobby typology and pre-dating 1835. The surviving thatch roof structure is of technical interest. It retains a wealth of original domestic features including the original post-office fixtures and fittings, now disused, and as such forms an important part of the social and economic history of the area. The building is an important example of a vernacular building, once common and now increasingly rare, and is of national interest.