The Laurels

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

An asymmetrical one-and-a-half storey polychrome brick house, formerly an orphanage, dated 1878 and located in the hamlet of Moyallen, between Gilford and Portadown. The house is T-shaped on plan, with modern return to rear.

Pitched natural slate roof with roll-moulded blue/black ridge tiles. Instepped polychrome brick chimneystacks to gables and junction with projecting central bay. Cast-iron rainwater goods over exposed rafter tails, and A-frame bargeboards (with apertures infilled) to gables with timber finials. Walling is Flemish bonded red brick (English garden wall bond to left cheek of projecting bay), with yellow brick quoins and areas of cement pointing. Windows are replacement 1/1 sashes, bi-partite to principal rooms; a single original quadripartite casement window remains at first floor left bay. All original openings have yellow brick dressings and granite sills.

Principal elevation faces west and has a full height projecting central bay with a window to each floor, and to left cheek at ground floor only. Between ground and first floor windows is a granite plaque in moulded surround inscribed “A FATHER / OF THE FATHERLESS IS GOD / IN THIS HOLY HABITATION / T.C.W”. Right bay contains the principal entrance at left side, comprising a modern timber sheeted door with fishscale-slated canopy over supported on picturesque Gothic style brackets with trefoil apertures and stop-end chamfering. Above is a wall-head dormer window surmounted by a datestone (top part crudely removed), retaining only the date, 1878. To right of the door is a window to ground floor. Left bay has a window to each floor.

North gable is blank.

Rear (east) elevation is generally modern, with replacement return and flat-roofed extension abutting right side. To left side of return is a mid-level stair window and modern French doors.

South gable has an infilled door opening to ground floor right and two windows to attic level.

Setting:
The house is set slightly back from the main road, bounded by a modern boundary wall and shrubs; there is a neatly planted shrubbery to front and to rear a large lawned garden; to south is an expansive gravelled parking area and a modern garage. To north is a row of small late nineteenth-century shops and houses, including the former post office, forming a small settlement.

Roof: Slate
Walling: Polychrome brick
Windows: Modern timber sash (one original casement)
RWG: Cast iron

Historical information

‘The Laurels’, now a dwelling, was built as an orphanage as the result of a bequest by Thomas Christy Wakefield, who died in 1878.

The ‘Orphanage’ is first shown, captioned, on the third edition OS map of 1901-2, as part of a group of dwellings, including a post office, bordering the road between Gilford and Moyallon.

Thomas Christy Wakefield was the great-grandson of Thomas Christy whose forebears are thought to have first established the linen trade along this stretch of the Bann and were the first Quakers to settle in the district. Thomas Christy Wakefield’s father, also named Thomas Christy Wakefield (1772-1861), built Moyallon House in 1794 which became the principal residence of the Wakefields. On his death Thomas Christy Wakefield (d.1878) left his property to his daughter Jane Marion Richardson (née Wakefield). (Rankin) In leaving a bequest to found the orphanage, Wakefield was following in a tradition both of Quaker philanthropy and of Victorian social paternalism in which the moneyed classes offered protection to the disadvantaged thereby softening the harsher effects of a competitive market economy. (Bodenheimer)

Unusually, the orphanage does not appear in Annual Revision fieldbooks and is first listed in the First General Revaluation of the 1930s. The orphanage appears in the 1901 census and at that time was being run by Sarah Feugard, matron, a member of the Society of Friends and was catering exclusively for the orphan children of Quakers. There were 8 girls resident in the ten-room house at the time, four from Belfast, two from Ballymena, one from County Armagh and one from Scotland. All the orphans were female and they were aged between 6 and 11. Sarah Feugard remained the matron in 1911 but the composition of the body of orphans had changed markedly. The ten girls were now almost all Episcopalian and came largely from County Armagh, with one from Lisburn, one from Tyrone and one from Dublin. Rebecca Uprichard was the only Quaker child at the orphanage in 1911. The girls were aged between 6 and 17. At the time of the First General Revaluation in 1934 the orphanage was valued at £19.10s and was run by Trustees and leased from Hilda Richardson. A plan and dimensions are given for the building which consisted of 5 bedrooms, 2 reception rooms, 2 kitchens, a scullery and a bathroom with hot and cold water. Sarah Feugard appears to have run the orphanage until her death in 1935 when she was in her mid-seventies. (Will of Sarah Feugard)

Quaker sources indicate that the orphanage was not under the formal control of the Society of Friends but was a private venture run by the Richardson family. It is recalled that Gertrude Harris (née Richardson) (1865-1938), the wife of Quaker, Frederick Leverton Harris MP (1864-1926), financed the orphanage for many years, paying for the housekeeper and expenses, although she lived in London. (Chapman) Her husband, Leverton Harris, played an instrumental part in the diversion of imports to Germany during World War One and was described as ‘the man who really makes the blockade’. However, towards the end of the war, both he and Gertrude were affected by scandals. Gertrude Harris, in particular, was accused of visiting an interned German, the son of a family friend, in prison and bringing him correspondence and parcels. Leverton Harris was a noted collector of art and antiques and left a substantial collection of maiolica to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge and further collections to the Victoria and Albert and British museums and the National Portrait Gallery. In later life, he studied at the Slade School of Art and began to paint in oils. (Dictionary of National Biography)

The orphanage was originally intended to provide for local orphans but later brought in girls from further afield including Dublin. The girls all attended Moyallon Quaker Meeting and are listed in the Book of Names, for example , in 1913 there are seven girls listed. Sarah Feugard, the matron for many years, was an Elder and a dependable Friend at the meeting. The orphanage remained in use until c1950 and subsequently became a private home for members of the Richardson family who gave it the name ‘The Laurels’. (Chapman)

The former orphanage continues in use as a private home.

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/26/3 Third Edition OS Map 1901-2
2. PRONI OS/6/3/26/4 Fourth Edition OS Map 1920-21
3. PRONI VAL/1/B/350 Townland Valuation (1828-40)
4. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/48A Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64)
5. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/25A-H Annual Revisions (1864-1930)
6. PRONI VAL/3/C/4/2 –First General Revaluation (1936-57)
7. PRONI VAL/3/D/4/3/M/5 – First General Revaluation Valuers RV Binder (1933-57)
8. PRONI Will of Sarah Feguard died 20th July 1935

Secondary Sources

1. Bodenheimer, R “The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction” Cornell University Press, 1988
2. Information supplied by Ross Chapman of Bessbrook Friends’ Meeting.
3. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
4. Rankin, K “The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley, The story of their families” Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2007

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

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Z. Rarity
X. Local Interest
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

79 Moyallen Road is a neat asymmetrical late Victorian house, of three bays and one-and-a-half-storeys, originally constructed as an orphanage and of considerable social historical significance, representative of Victorian philanthropic tendencies, and with links to the local Quaker community. The house is of brick, having ornamentation in brickwork and timber consistent with the period of restrained picturesque Gothic detailing. Despite some replacement fabric, key characteristics survive and it is a good example of an unusual building type.