Pavilion

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Single-storey garden pavilion of c.1880-90 with a wide overhanging hipped roof supported on prominent timber brackets, set within the grounds of Milford Manor House.

Setting
Milford Lodge estate adjoins the southern boundary of Milford village. A long straight driveway runs due south from the village then curves west to the main manor entrance. Just north of the house and set back some 50 metres on the western side of the driveway is a modern single-storey building. A walled garden is set a further 50 metres to the west side. The pavilion rests between the walled garden and the single-storey building. The grounds are grassed to the central areas while the boundary is quite heavily wooded.

Pavilion
This is a detached, single-storey pavilion; the footprint is rectangular with a rear, centrally placed, single-storey return. To the immediate south is a small open-air swimming poor. ‘ Hit-and-miss’ timber fencing protect the north and eastern boundaries of the pool and consequently encroach on the southern façade of the pavilion.

East
The front eastern façade is symmetrical with a central, projecting canopy supported on timber posts. Either side of the canopy are two-bay, glazed timber screens. Each bay has two glazed panels with fixed ‘ladder’ lights, surmounted by a top-hung opener. Recessed into the centre of the east façade is an open porch; to either exposed cheek is an entrance door.

North
The north façade is blind.

West
Either side of the return the western faces are blind.

Return
The north face of the return has two window openings (both bricked up). The west face has a central door opening flanked with a window opening either side; all these openings are bricked up. The southern face has one, bricked up, window opening.

South
The south elevation is blind.

Materials
Roof
The roof comprises three hipped roof sections; those to the main roof and the small canopy have deep overhangs supported on decorative gallows brackets while the roof to the return has a shallow, unsupported roof overhang.

The front edge of the projecting canopy is supported on two freestanding timber posts. Large gallows brackets to the front and outer edges of the posts support the deep roof overhang; on either side of the porch and on north and south facades further matching brackets support the deep overhang. Solid carved timber brackets attach to the rear and inner sides of the posts creating an arched effect to the front entrance.

Soffits to the deep overhangs are finished with timber boarding arranged in herringbone pattern.

The roof is covered with black fibre cement slates with matching ridge tiles. Rainwater goods are formed in extruded aluminium.

Walls are finished with roughcast render.

Either side of the main entrance the east façade has timber framed glazing. Other window frames are timber with a fixed lower light below a top-hung upper light.

Doors are timber panelled.

Milford Manor House [HB15.14.006]
Set to the southern side of the site, this is a large and sprawling, mainly concrete-built two-storey country house constructed in a myriad of stages between c.1865 and 1904. Facades are finished in decorative render.

Modern Building
Set to the eastern side of the pavilion is a modern, single-storey, gabled building.
Plainly detailed, the building is rendered; to the south-eastern corner is a small square tower with pyramidal hipped roof.

Walled garden
Set to the immediate west is the walled garden. Whilst in use as a school the area was tarred and employed for vehicle parking. The perimeter wall is constructed in brick.

Historical information

On the OS six-inch map of 1835 the site now taken up by what was originally Milford Manor House, its attendant outbuildings and the pavilion, was occupied by a small dwelling accessed by a long straight drive from the east. This house appears to be that recorded in the 1836 valuation as a thatched building then occupied by a James Oliver and measuring 44½ft x 19½ x 7, with a return of 8 x 8½ x 5. Some distance to the north of this was a larger dwelling, marked on the 1835 map as ‘Millford House’, an old three-storey thatched residence of 40 x 28 x 22 with a single-storey return, recorded in the same valuation as the home of John McKay. To the north, on the other side of the road was ‘Millford Mills’, the property of William McCrum (1795-1879), whose substantial house of 44 x 22 x 21 (with lower one and a half-storey return), was either attached to the mill building itself, or more likely stood just to the north of it.

On the revised OS six-inch map of 1860, the same buildings are shown, with ‘Millford House’ in the possession of Anne MacKay in the c.1862 valuation, and William McCrum still living beside his mill. The small dwelling to the south was by that point the home of a John McIntyre, but within a year or two the lease of it and its land had been acquired by (or passed to) Osborne Kidd, with the house itself reported as ‘getting dilapidated and vacant’. Sometime before 1862 and 1867, (local historian Stephen-Paul McManus says 1864), William McCrum’s son, Robert Garmany McCrum (1827-1915) took on the lease of the site and began to build a new house on a larger scale, which eventually evolved into the present 'Manor House'. Whether he retained anything of the older building is not certain. Map evidence shows that it stood in the same position as the rear end of the new structure and is likely to have been cleared at some point post-1865 to make way for the latter.

In 1872, Robert McCrum also acquired Millford House to the north, demolishing it within the following decade (it was gone by 1882) and using the land, it would seem, merely for farming. Meanwhile he kept enlarging his new residence, making additional sections –apparently at least partly to his own designs and mainly in concrete- in 1882, 1886, 1889, and 1899, with more ‘new buildings in progress’ mentioned in 1904. A note by a valuer made in 1904 or 1905 remarks that ‘much had been taken down and rebuilt’ (presumably over a number of years) at an estimated cost of £5,336.

At what stage the pavilion was added to the site is difficult to determine. McManus believes it to have been the original McCrum family homestead, but (as witnessed above) this is not supported by sources, as the only earlier McCrum house we know of was beside the mill and the exact spot on which the pavilion stands appears to have been vacant up until at least 1862. It is possible that the house that previously stood within the general vicintity, and which appears to have been cleared away by Robert in the 1860s, did indeed once belong to the family, but neither its size as recorded in the 1836 valuation nor its position matched that of the pavilion. In any case the whole design and construction of the latter does not suggest that it was ever a dwelling.

The first ‘hard’ evidence relating to the building is a detailed plan of the Manor House and its associated structures, drawn up by the valuers in 1904. On this it is designated as a ‘tennis pavilion’ and recorded as a wooden structure with a tiled roof, measuring 33ft x 16 x 10, with the rear projection amounting to 13 x 13 x 9. Its appearance suggests it could be as early as the mid-1880s, a time when R.G. McCrum’s building exploits appear to have been particularly prolific. The timberwork shows certain affinities to that belonging to the gate lodge [HB15.14.008] at the entrance to the grounds, which is believed to date from the same decade, and may have been the work of architects Young & McKenzie. It is possible that Robert’s son and heir, William (‘Master Willie’) McCrum (d.1932), who had sporting interests and is credited with inventing the penalty kick, was responsible for the building.

The ‘Manor House’ passed into the ownership of William McCrum himself in 1915. Never adept at business, he lost heavily in the Crash of 1929 and was forced to auction the contents of the house the following year and sell the mill the year after that. He died penniless in 1932 and the Manor House came into the ownership of the Northern Bank. In 1936 the bank leased it to a private boarding school for girls (‘Manor House School’), who bought it outright for £3,000 in 1940. The school closed in 1965 and in 1966 the property was sold to the Northern Ireland Hospital Authority for use as a special care home. This shut in 1988 and since then the property has remained vacant.

Mr McManus states that the pavilion was used as a classroom during the tenure of the Manor House School and [?later] a changing room, whilst the room at the back became known as ‘the Den’, and was used by senior pupils. He adds that in 1940 ‘the trees around [it] were cleared away and 3 tennis courts built opposite’, however given that the building had acted as a tennis pavilion since at least 1904 (and was probably built as such), surely there must have been courts close to it from the beginning.

References- Primary sources
1 OSNI OS-6-2-12-1; OS-6-2-16-1 (1835)
2 PRONI VAL1B/27
3 OSNI OS-6-2-12-2; OS-6-2-16-2 (1860)
4 PRONI VAL2B/2/8A (c.1860-62)
5 PRONI VAL12B/10/9A-F (1866-1929)
6 PRONI VAL12A/2/2 (1899)
7 PRONI VAL12A/2/4 (1904)
8 OSNI OS-6-2-12-3; (1905-06)
10 PRONI VAL12B/10/36A (1923-29)
11 PRONI VAL3B/2/3 (1935)
12 PRONI VAL3C/2/5 (1936-56)
13 PRONI VAL4B/2/7 (1957-72)

Secondary sources
1 Dean, JAK, ‘The Gate Lodges of Ulster- a Gazetteer’ (Belfast, 1994), pp.40-41
2 McManus, Joe, ‘Milford, Red Bricks and Golden Memories, A Village History’(Lurgan, 2002)
3 Rankin, Kathleen, ‘The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley’, (Belfast, 2007), pp.214-17
4 Information supplied by Stephen-Paul McManus, (November 2011)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

R. Age
S. Authenticity
U. Historic Associations
X. Local Interest
Z. Rarity

Evaluation

Surviving late Victorian sporting related structures (either privately-built or public) are very rare and for this reason alone, the pavilion is of historic interest. Aside from this, it is an ornate piece of late Victorian architecture possessing a particularly noteworthy set of large (almost exaggerated) brackets supporting a wide overhanging roof and a boarded and coved internal ceiling to the front section . It has group value with the listed main house (HB15.14.006), Fountain (HB15.14.007) and Gate lodge (HB15.14.008).

General comments

Listing Criteria: R - Age, S - Authenticity and U - Historic Associations also apply to this building.