Formerly 125 Dungannon Road, Portadown,Craigavon, BT62 1UG

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single-storey vernacular house with attached outbuilding, located in a farmyard, on a quiet country road just over 1km south of M1 at The Birches and 3km from south shore of Lough Neagh - approx. 3 km from Portadown town. The house faces South and is four-bay, rectangular with a hearth-lobby planform and a single-storey extension to rear. There is a low single-storey outbuilding attached to the E gable.

Materials:

Roof: Corrugated tin (over thatch)
RWG: uPVC
Walls: Mud and red-brick with dry-dash render.
Windows: Timber sliding-sash 2/2, single-glazed.

Front elevation (S)
The front elevation has a small porch with pitched roof located off-centre, to the right. It has a square-headed door opening with a painted boarded-timber door with knob handle and glazed overlight with patterned glass. There is a painted timber bargeboard and soffit and the roof is corrugated tin. There are 3 no. square-headed window openings to the left-hand side of the porch and 1 no. to the right. Window openings are boarded-up with timber (but are visible internally and are generally 2/2 sliding-sash windows, single-glazed). Walls are treated with a dry-dash finish and are mud with red-brick surrounds to the openings. There are decorative smooth render bands around the window openings and a plain smooth render plinth at ground level. Cills are smooth rendered red-brick. The porch has painted smooth render walls. There is a plain painted timber fascia at eaves level and uPVC rain water goods. The roof is corrugated tin roof (over thatch). There are 3 no. rendered red-brick chimney stacks with pots missing. The attached outbuilding on E is plainly detailed with no window openings to S and painted rough-cast render walls. The roof is corrugated tin (no thatch beneath) with 2 no. metal roof lights (glass missing from 1no. Rooflight). Gutters match the main house.

Rear elevation (N)
The rear elevation of the main house is plain with an extension located centrally and 2 no. square-headed window openings located each side. On the left-hand side one of the window openings is boarded-up with timber and the other has been widened in mid-20th century and fitted with a painted timber window with top-hung sections (single-glazed). On the right-hand side, the wall of the first bay protrudes slightly and the windows are painted timber 2/2 sliding-sash, single glazed.
The extension is early-mid 20th Century in brick with rough-cast render finish. It has large square-headed window opening on the N and W elevations and a square-headed door opening on the E. Windows have painted metal windows. The window on the N elevation is multi-paned and window on W has top opening central section. The door is painted panelled timber.
The walls to the main house are painted rough-cast render. There is a slightly projecting band at eaves, possibly related to mid-20th Century modifications to thatch roof. Eaves, gutters and roof are the same as the front elevation. The outbuilding on E side is plainly detailed at rear, with no openings, the same as the front.

Side elevation €
Side elevation is blank painted rough-cast render with outbuilding attached. Eaves have painted timber bargeboard and soffit to match others.There is a single square-headed door opening on the E gable of the outbuilding.

Side elevation (W)
Side elevation is blank painted rough-cast render. Eaves have painted timber bargeboard and soffit to match others.

Setting:
The house is set back slightly from the road in front of a modern farmyard with gravel finish to the front of the house and concrete hardstanding to yard. There is a modern stained timber fence on low concrete plinth on the front boundary of the group. There are mature shrubs and trees to the N and W of the house. There is a large lean-to shed at the W boundary with painted roughcast render walls and large corrugated metal sliding door. There is a modern house on the adjacent site to the W.

Historical information

A shorter structure, which probably equates to the present house in some form, is shown on this site on the OS map of 1834-35. This building is not recorded in the near contemporary first valuation, so it is difficult to tell whether it was actually smaller than the current dwelling, or whether this is simply an inaccuracy in the cartography (as was sometimes the case).

Like many vernacular dwellings it is difficult to ascertain a date of construction for this building. Rocque’s detailed County Armagh map of 1760 does not mark Derrykeeran townland by name, but depicts a largely boggy landscape traversed by several drainage channels. The smaller scale 1785 ‘O’Neill’ map of the Lough Neagh hinterland shows a similarly undeveloped landscape. It is likely that the house dates from the very end of the 1700s or the early 1800s, a time of rapid population increase throughout Ireland which witnessed the building on more ‘marginal’ areas of land in general. Population in this particular area of north Armagh also benefitted from the growth in the linen manufacturing, a trend which witnessed the building of new dwellings within which spinning and weaving were also carried out.

On the revised map of 1859 the building is shown as today but without the small rear return, and it is recorded in the c.1860 valuation as the home of Joseph Hare, with Thomas C. Wakefield the immediate lessor and the property rated at £1-10-0.

In 1870 the valuation was raised to £2-5-0 on account of the construction of a ‘new thatched office’. William Hare succeeded as occupant at some point c.1894, acquiring the freehold in 1906. The property was bought by (or passed to) Samuel J. Benson in 1912, with whose descendant it remains. In 1917 Mr. Benson began renting the house to Samuel Clarke, who was still living there in 1930.

The house appears to have remained occupied until the c.1990s, when a late 20th Century dwelling was built to the immediate west.

References – Primary sources
1 ‘Survey of the County of Armagh’ by John Rocque, 1760
2 Map of ‘Lough Neagh and country adjacent..’, 1785
3 OS maps Six-inch County Series –Armagh sheet 5 - 1834-35, 1859, 1905
4 PRONI VAL2B/2/21B Second valuation, c.1860
5 PRONI VAL12B/14/15A-F Annual valuation revisions, 1864-1929
6 OS maps, Irish Grid, 1964-65, 1981

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
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

Evaluation

Single-storey vernacular house, of probable pre-1833 construction, with mud walls, thatch under tin roof and attached outbuilding. The house is located in a farmyard, on a quiet country road just south of the M1 at The Birches, near Portadown, Co. Armagh. It is four-bay, with a hearth-lobby planform and largely intact interior, including a large hearth, panelled doors and boarded ceilings. Retaining its original vernacular proportions, its sliding-sash windows and a remarkably intact thatch under tin roof with roughly hewn timbers, it is of significant architectural and historic interest. Located in an area of similar style surviving vernacular houses, many with similar planfroms, mud wall and roof construction, It is part of a signicant indigenous group of buildings on the S shore of Lough Neagh.