30 Bluestone Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Four structural bay, lobby entry, semi-detached, thatched house (neighbour largely gone), with smooth rendered and painted (formerly whitewashed) walls. Building faces south onto Bluestone Road and is separated from it by a garden approximately six meters deep. Whitewashed wall and hedge along edge of road with wrot iron gate opposite entrance. Gate flanked by square posts with pyramidal caps. Round ‘Ulster’ piers flank wrot iron gate to farmyard at eastern end.

Scallop thatch to roof (combed wheat reed) with flush head recently applied. This is fixed with an X shaped pattern of liggers Small hip on thatch, (ridge peak) at eastern end as it drops to form a protective verge over the gable wall. A similar peak is formed at the other end of the roof as it drops to meet the tin roof of the neighbour. No other fixings are discernable on the roof . The eaves and verge are protected by wire mesh. The eaves are cut back parallel with the ground. The verge is cut parallel with the roof. Wet dashed chimneys are parged in cement at junction with thatch.

Small rectangular porch with flat roof sits out from centre of house. It has pebble dashed walls and (probably) sand/cement corners and cornice. All now painted white as rest of building. Windows on the front elevation are painted white, sashed, and of irregular distribution and size. There are no horns on the sashes and the boxes are exposed. To the east of the main entrance, two windows light the interior room while a single window lights the end structural bay. To the right of the entrance a smaller high placed window lights the kitchen, while two farther windows light the last-larger-structural bay. The entrance is in almost the exact centre of the building. On the ridge there are two chimneys. One aligning with the entrance door the other over the structural bay to the east.

To the west is a small tin roofed barn abutts the house. This is owned by a different person and is all that remains of a second house of similar proportion to the one described. The mud walls of this shed are exposed and are weathering.

To the rear of the building, is a small concrete topped yard about three meters deep surrounded by a waist high concrete block retaining wall. A flat roofed kitchen extension projects from the centre of the elevation. There are two small windows to the interior to the west of the return. One sash one casement. A large casement to the kitchen, and a horizontal proportion casement – in keeping with the character of the house to the former kitchen on the east side. The wall on the east side is rendered in a fine wet dash and it sits forward about 150mm. The thatch above is not altered, which means that rather than a 300m thickness a 150mm thickness of thatch is exposed along this edge. There is a sash window into the bay near the gable.

The end gable is blank.

A two storey red brick barn is perpendicular to the house and aligns two metres to the rear with the gable. The bricks are hand made and laid in English Garden Wall bond. It has a natural slate roof which is sagging and two flat arches for farm machinery. It compliments the
setting of the house.

Historical information

This house, at one time one of a semi-detached pair, is shown on the OS map of 1834 / 35 with what appears to a be a the porch to the front. It is not included in the first valuation of c.1835, but is noted in that of 1862 as the home of Alexander Pendleton, who was leasing it directly from the Manchester Estate, with the rateable value given as £2-5-0. By this time the barn to the rear had been constructed. In 1878 Alexander Pendleton gave way to a Richard Dilworth, and in the following year, or shortly later, the lease was acquired by an Arthur McMurray. Dilworth remained as tenant, buying the freehold outright in 1910. An Alexander Dilworth is recorded as the occupant in 1919, remaining there until at least 1929.

At some point after this the house was acquired by the Robinson family. It was vested by the Craigavon Development in the 1960s, but sold back to its previous owner in 1994.

The age of the property is uncertain. In the mid to later 1600s, the Bluestone Road, then known as the ‘King’s High Street’ was witnessed a relatively large influx of settlers including many Quakers (mainly from Yorkshire), and, it has been suggested a significant number of people from neighbouring parishes dispossessed in the upheavals of the 1640s. Perhaps partly as a result of this, a relatively dense collection of buildings sprang up along the length of the road. Some of these are indicated at various points along the road on John Rocque’s 1760 map of the area, but this plan is not accurate enough to draw any conclusions as regards this or any other building in the area. An estate map of Crossmacahilly, drawn up between 1765 and 1770 shows that the property’s plot boundaries had been established by that time, suggesting that a house was already present. The name ‘Th. Stewart’ [presumably Thomas Stewart] is written within the plot, but the list of tenants accompanying the map states that it was in the hands of ‘Widow Richard Dynes’; interestingly, a ‘Dynes Hill’ is marked a short distance to the southwest of the house on the current OS map. Local historian, Francis McCorry, in his ‘Journeys in County Armagh and Adjoining Districts’ states that the house is ‘late 18th century’.

Returning to more recent times, in the late 1980s some renovation works were carried out to the building. The rear kitchen was constructed and a concrete wall built in front of the mud wall to the rear of the eastern bay, as the slope of the wall was considered to be in need of support. The roof was re-thatched in 1992, repaired in 1998 and again in 2000, with wheat straw used on each occasion. The neighbouring building was recorded by the first Historic Buildings Survey in 1970. On a visit in 1986 the building was recorded as ‘derelict no longer fit to list’ and due to its mud construction is likely to have decayed fast after this date. The surveyed building was listed in 1988.

As with other buildings in the area the Government as part of the Craigavon New Town development compulsorily purchased it during the 1960’s. It was sold back to its original owner in 1994. In the late 1980’s some renovation works were carried out to the building The rear kitchen was constructed and a concrete block wall was built in front of the mud wall to the rear of the eastern bay. This was because the slope of the wall was considered to need support. The building was re-thatched in 1992 with repairs carried out in 1998. It was given a new coat in 2000. All of this work was in Wheat Straw.

References- Primary sources
1 Linen Hall Library ‘Survey of the County of Armagh by John Rocque’ (1760)
2 PRONI D.727/20/A-C Duke of Manchester Estate maps- Maps of various townlands including Crossmacahilly etc. (1765-70)
3 PRONI D.727/23/A-D Duke of Manchester Estate maps- Maps of various townlands including Crossmacahilly etc. (1771, 1785, 1805)
4 PRONI D.727/47/A-D Duke of Manchester Estate maps- Maps of various townlands including Crossmacahilly etc. (1807)
5 PRONI VAL/1A/2/10 OS map, County Armagh sheet 10, with valuation
references (1834 / 35)
6 PRONI VAL/2A/2/10A OS map, County Armagh sheet 10, with valuation references (1860 [-c.62])
7 PRONI VAL/2B/2/19B Second valuation, Seagoe (1862)
8 PRONI VAL/12B/14/7A-E Annual valuation revision books, Kernan ED (1864-1929)

Secondary sources
1 Brett, C.E.B., Oram, R., et al, ‘Lists of Historic Buildings…Craigavon’ (revised edition, Belfast, [?1979]), p.8 (Section 1)
2 Brett, C.E.B., ‘The Buildings of County Armagh’ (Belfast, 1999), p.213
3 McCorry, Francis, ‘Journeys in County Armagh and Adjoining Districts’ (Lurgan, Inglewood Press, 2000), pp.18-27
4. Oram R ‘Craigavon’ UAHS 1971, p8
5. Current Owner

Other references
1 EHS Historic Buildings file HB14/04/001

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
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

A four structural bay lobby entry, mud walled thatched house, formerly semi detached but now without its neighbour. Vernacular plan survives with interesting adaptations and structural system is of note for its increasing rarity. Roof is historic and intact. A rare survivor of one half of a semidetached vernacular pair.