14 Seavers Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two storey, two bay vernacular house aligned NE/SW accessed by a rubble stone-lined lane off Seavers Road.

Pitched artificial slate roof with rendered chimney to each gable. Half round metal rainwater goods.

All walls are lined cement rendered over random rubble; stepped quoins to front elevation only. Principal elevation faces SE. Set to right of centre is a porch with pitched artificial slate roof and smooth rendered walls. Its right cheek contains a t+g sheeted entrance door. Its front face has a 1/1 fixed timber window with concrete cill. Its left cheek is blank. To right and left of the porch each bay has a single window to each floor, equally aligned. All are 4/4 exposed box sliding sash windows with concrete cills.

Left and right gables are identical. Both are abutted by a lower single storey outbuilding; the exposed section is blank. Outbuildings have pitched roofs, lime rendered rubble stone walls and t+g sheeted doors to their principal faces. That to left has a felted roof (in poor condition) and that to right has a corrugated metal roof. The latter’s right gable is abutted by a lower similarly detailed but smaller outbuilding.

Rear elevation is smooth rendered and has a window to each floor of each bay. All are 4/4 sliding sashes.

To front is a small garden and a one-and-a-half storey outbuilding detailed as others and of no interest.

Historical information

A building is shown on OS maps from 1835 onwards. Its rateable valuation in 1835 was less than £5 so no statistics are given in the Valuation book of this date. This indicates a one-storey building, not the two-storey one which now exists. In 1862 its valuation was £1 and this remains the case through to the 1920s. Given that there is no increase in valuation, its raising to two storeys must therefore have occurred before or after these two dates. Its low valuation is commensurate with one-storey buildings elsewhere in the locality. The balance of probability is therefore that it was raised after the 1920s - possibly in the 1930s.

Primary sources:
1. First edition OS 6" map, Co Armagh sheet 29, 1835 (PRONI - OS 6/2/29/1).
2. Second Valuation book, 1862 (PRONI - VAL 2B/2/37B, p.147).
3. Valuation Revision books, 1860s-1920s (PRONI - VAL 12B/15/17A-D).

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A pleasantly sited vernacular farmhouse with outbuildings to each gable; retaining its early sash windows to rear elevation.

General comments

**Under consideration : awaing additional information** 30th March 2004