Old Rectory

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A 2-storey gabled Victorian house with an open timber-work porch and prominent chimneys. Main entrance faces approximately west.

Roof of Bangor blue slates in regular courses with plain timber bargeboards, oversailing eaves on chamfered timber struts; cast iron rainwater goods. Prominent painted stone chimneys with chamfered stacks and tall battered caps.
Walling is of snecked basalt rubble with yellow brick block quoins and similar dressings to windows; lozenge shaped dressed stone ventilation holes to apex of main gables and in plinth; two similar shaped small window openings to north elevation.
Windows are mainly rectangular timber coupled sliding sash, vertically hung, 2 over 2, with horns, set in slightly cambered flat arches; the north elevation also includes a pair of coupled semi-circular arched windows, sashed as previous.

Main entrance contains a rectangular timber tongued and grooved sheeted door of herring-bone pattern with narrow side lights and arched fanlight set in a segmental-arched brick surround. Projecting in front of main entrance is an elaborate open-sided timber porch with steeply pitched lean-to roof supported on stop-chamfered timber posts with similarly chamfered struts; some of the timber members are modern replacements but reportedly not exactly to original pattern.

SETTING: The house stands in a very rural area, set in its own grounds surrounded by mature trees, and reached by a driveway. To the rear, connected to the house by a high rubble basalt screen wall, is a 2-storey outbuilding of similar style to the main house, with its entrance facing into an enclosed yard between it and the house.

Historical information

Built as a rectory for the Church of Ireland; precise date of building not recorded but it appears on the OS map of 1856. Stylistically it may be dated to the 1860s which would accord with the date of the establishing of Diamond as a perpetual curacy out of Drumcree and Kilmore parishes on 13 July 1867. The first 'perpetual curate' to be appointed, in 1867, was Edward Gabbett; at that time services were held in the nearby Grange O'Neiland School, and continued so until 1927 when St Paul's Church was built beside the school. Date when rectory relinquished by the church and it became a private dwelling is not known.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1956, Co Armagh 9 (named 'Diamond Parsonage').

Secondary Sources
1. J.B. Leslie, Armagh Clergy and Parishes (Dundalk, 1911), p 224.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
E. Spatial Organisation
G. Innovatory Qualities
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

This is a former Victorian rectory which appears to retain its original features including prominent battered chimneys and an elaborate timber porch.