Whitefield College of the Bible

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Detached three-bay two-storey rendered former house, remodelled c.1875 with an earlier core, with two formal elevations and a multi-bay two-storey return added c.1910. L-shaped on plan and set on an elevated site within landscaped grounds on the south side of Banbridge Road, accessed via a long avenue with a range of two-storey rubblestone outbuildings to the north and walled garden to the northeast. Formerly called Lawrencetown House the building is now in educational use.

Hipped natural slate roofs with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles, rolled lead hips and five decorative rendered profiled chimneystacks with octagonal clay pots. Moulded cast-iron guttering supported on moulded eaves course with round cast-iron downpipes having decorative iron brackets. Ruled-and-lined rendered walling with projecting smooth rendered plinth course and continuous rendered sill course to each floor. Square-headed window openings with masonry sills and 1/1 timber sliding sash windows.

Front (north-west) entrance elevation is three bays wide and comprises a central single-storey entrance porch flanked to left by a canted bay window (both having deep moulded cornice and parapet walls) and to right by a window. At first floor, three slender window openings are positioned over the canted bay to left with window to centre and right. The entrance porch has a pair of slender round-arched window openings to the front with a single moulded sill; left cheek blank; square-headed door to right cheek with moulded architrave surround and keystone having an original timber door with two flat panels, bolection mouldings and Art Nouveau brass door furniture. Door opens onto terracotta tiled step to front gravel area.

North-east elevation abutted by hip roofed two-storey wing (lower eaves), added c.1910, detailed as per main house. To the southern re-entrant angle is a further hip roofed two-storey block (lower eaves) also detailed as per main house.
North-east face of two-storey wing has a wall to left and a mono-pitched extension to right; right cheek has seven windows to each floor (first floor windows directly over and right two more closely spaced); left cheek has a central window to each floor flanked by a window to each floor to right and a fully glazed timber door to left; partially abutted to left by the two-storey block.

South-east elevation has a two-storey hip roofed return left of centre; left bay not viewed; right bay fully abutted by the two storey block.

Two-storey return comprises central wall-headed chimney with two windows to ground floor right and a window to far left and far right at first floor; left cheek has fully glazed timber double doors with square-headed overlight and window over to left and a single storey canted bay with three slender window openings over to right; right cheek has a wall-headed chimney and a central window to first floor and is abutted to left by the two-storey block.

Two-storey block comprises a square-headed timber panelled and glazed door to left with window to centre and right at ground floor and three windows to first floor with a blocked up window to right; right cheek has a window to first floor.

South-west garden elevation has a single storey canted bay with three slender windows over.

Setting

Set on an elevated landscaped site at a meander on the river Bann, accessed via a long gravel avenue to the north. Gravel yard to the north is enclosed to the west by a two-storey rubblestone outbuilding with half-hipped natural slate roof having cast-iron guttering to redbrick eaves course, square-headed openings with brick relieving arches, granite sills and early sheeted timber doors and shutters. Abutting the front elevation is a further single-storey rubblestone structure with hipped natural slate roof and sheeted timber doors. To the north-east is an enclosed garden with tall redbrick walls and a pair of wrought-iron gates on redbrick piers. Within the walled garden is a detached corrugated iron hall removed from Sixmilecross, Co. Tyrone in 1983. Site enclosed to the road by rubblestone walling with stacked coping having a pair of replacement steel gates supported on granite ashlar piers with decorative stone capstones.

Roof Natural slate
Walling Render
Windows Timber
RWG Cast-iron

Historical information

A house was present on the site from at least 1777, the date of Taylor and Skinner’s Map of the Roads of Ireland. However, the present house, although occupying the original site, has been thoroughly remodelled in the intervening years and valuation records suggest that a date of c.1875 can be given to its current appearance.

‘Laurencetown House’ (also later known as Lawrencetown) is shown captioned on the first edition OS map of 1834. The house is on a rectangular plan with return and extensive outbuildings form a stable courtyard to the east of the house, some of which have survived to the present day. A walled garden within a demesne dotted with trees forms a small estate around the house and to the north is ‘Hall’s Mill Village’. Bleach mills are shown to the south and west of the house, and an extensive bleach green ‘Spring Vale’ is separated from the house by the River Bann. By the second edition of 1858 ‘Lawrencetown’ House has acquired a porch to the front facade and the nearby village has been renamed ‘Lawrencetown’.

The estate at Lawrencetown was the property of a Colonel Laurence who came into possession during the Cromwellian period through his wife, Agnes Barrett. Colonel Laurence granted a lease to Francis Hall, whose mill, built the following year, was known as Hall’s Mill. Laurence had no male heir and his estate passed to Thomas Dawson who then added the name to his own in deference to his inheritance, his mother having been a Laurence. (www.banbridge.com) Thomas Dawson Laurence (born 1730) was an army veteran and a published poet, his ‘Miscellaneous Works’ appearing in eight volumes in 1806. His ‘Epitaph on an orphan beggar child’ has appeared in a recent collection of Eighteenth Century Irish Verse edited by Andrew Carpenter. In 1796 Laurence sold the Laurencetown estate to Ross Thompson, later of Greenwood Park in Newry, for £35,000. (www.banbridge.com)

Thompson lived at Lawrencetown House from 1797 until c1810. In 1811 Alexander Stewart of Ards House, Donegal and a brother of the 1st Marquess of Londonderry unsuccessfully negotiated to purchase the Laurencetown estate but it was overvalued at more than £100,000. Negotiations continued, however and by the 1820s the house became Stewart’s property (PRONI. Logan quotes a contemporary description of the house, which was thought to be ‘very commodious, and washed by the River Bann – the offices slated and finished in a superb manner. There are six acres of fine orchard, the gardens extensive and highly ornamental, in one of which there is a fountain that hath a sulphurous water. The estate is well wooded and does not contain one unprofitable acre, the most of it being rich meadow.’ (Logan)

Stewart’s land agent Captain George Bowen lived at the house for some years, although Stewart himself was occasionally resident. The Townland Valuation (1827-40) lists the occupier as Captain Bowen and values the house and offices at £42.16s. Dimensions are given for the house and a number of wings and rear ‘projections’. Outbuildings are also listed, comprising a laundry and dairy, servants’ room, scullery, harness room, coach house, stables, cow houses, car and cart houses, poultry house, gardener’s house and gate houses.

Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64) records George E Bowen (magistrate) still in residence and leasing the house, offices, gate house and over 34 acres from A R Stewart. The buildings are valued at £55. The valuer comments, ‘neat concern, house stone finished but not commodious, small rooms’. The dimensions given correspond to those recorded in the Townland Valuation (1828-40). George E Bowen Esq became a prominent local figure in his own right and was a JP by the time of his resignation as land agent c1865.

In 1866 the entire contents of the house were sold at auction and are listed in some detail in the Belfast Newsletter including ‘Fashionable furniture and effects comprising mahogany parlour and drawing room chairs, easy chairs, sofas, loungers, sideboard, cabinets, chiffoniers, dining, loo, card, writing...and other tables, superb Brussels, Kidderminster and other Carpets and Rugs, Window hangings in Damask and Moreen...Four-post Mahogany, Albert, French and other Bedsteads.’ Outside effects included, ‘a very elegant Clarence, just out of Bathurst’s factory, and quite as good as new’, horses, cows and agricultural equipment, even a two-oared boat.

The following year, 1867, the house, garden and walled-in demesne were advertised to let in the Belfast Newsletter. The house then comprised a drawing-room, dining-room, breakfast parlour, four large and three smaller bedrooms and an ‘excellent’ kitchen, pantry and offices. The outbuildings and stables were said to be large and convenient. The two acre walled garden contained fruit trees ‘in full bearing’ and an excellent range of vineries. In the meantime the house was the residence of Edward Murphy but the valuation was increased to £75 c.1875 suggesting some improvements at this time.

In 1877 the house was purchased by Henry Albert Uprichard, the Uprichards having become owners of the Springvale bleach works in the 1830s. Henry Albert Uprichard moved to the house on his marriage to Emily Green, daughter of Forster Green the wealthy Belfast tea and coffee merchant. The couple remained there until 1884 when they moved to Elmfield Castle. In 1892 the house was again advertised to let in the Belfast Newsletter and the tenants are subsequently listed in valuation records, James Wilson in 1892 and James Law(1896), 27-year-old farmer who lived in the 15-room house with a general domestic of 65 from County Monaghan (1901 census). William Forster Uprichard lived in the house in 1912 and Forster Green Uprichard in 1913. Captain Forster Green Uprichard ‘rebuilt’ the house and this is recorded in valuation notes which note the removal of a portion of the house and the addition of a new portion. However the plan form of the building is little altered as depicted on subsequent OS map editions (with the exception of the removal of one of the two rear returns) and it is likely that much of the earlier fabric was retained. Valuer’s notes also state that all the office housing was very old and in poor condition and the greenhouses were in ruins. The overall valuation of buildings on the site was reduced to £60 because the gate lodges and a ‘motorman’s house’ were separated off and valued separately. The Uprichards continued at the house until Captain Forster Uprichard’s death in 1945, when it was taken over by another linen family, the Fergusons. James Dickson Ferguson OBE DL lived in the house shortly after his return from service as a Lieutenant Colonel in the army in the Second World War. Ferguson had inherited Edenderry House, Banbridge from his uncle but he sold it in 1947 to Banbridge Academy and moved to Lawrencetown House while restoring Aghaderg Glebe House where he later lived until his death in 1979. (Rankin)

In the First General Revaluation of 1933/4 the accommodation was noted to be, on the ground floor L-shaped hall and porch, dining room with bay, parlour, morning room , cloak room (washbasin and separate WC), in the service wing, a kitchen, scullery, two panties, a servants hall, larder and outside wash house. Upstairs was a square landing, one principle bedroom with its own bath, lavatory and WC out of same, two visitors’ bedrooms and a dressing room and visitors’ bath, washbasin and WC. In the wing were three servants’ bedrooms, a housemaids pantry, servants bath and separate WC, linen cupboard and boot room. The electric light was from ‘works’ and water was supplied from a pump and well. The valuer commented that the house had been modernised and that there was a very extensive park attached. The associated plan shows the house with porch, bays and service wing and a series of single and two-storey outbuildings including a coalhouse, stables, stores, a garage, byre and fowl house.

In recent years the house has been converted into a bible college, Whitefield College of the Bible, which opened in 1981. The college is operated by the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and offers training for those wishing to enter their ministry. In 1983 a corrugated iron mission hall from Sixmilecross, County Tyrone in which the Rev Dr Ian Paisley preached his first sermon was moved into the walled garden where it remains today.

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/26/1 First Edition OS Map 1834
2. PRONI OS/6/3/26/2 Second Edition OS map 1858
3. PRONI OS/6/3/26/3 Third Edition OS Map 1901-2
4. PRONI OS/6/3/26/4 Fourth Edition OS Map 1920-21
5. PRONI VAL/1/B/350 Townland Valuation (1828-40)
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/48A – Griffith’s Valuation (c.1861)
7. PRONI VAL/12/A/3/8 – Valuer’s Notes 1913
8. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/25A-H Annual Revisions (1864-1930)
9. PRONI VAL/3/C/4/3 First General Revaluation (1933-57)
10. PRONI VAL/3/D/4/3/M/3 First General Revaluation (1933-57)
11. PRONI D4137/A/2 Letters to Alexander Stewart 1771-74
12. PRONI D959/4/1/29 Deed of surrender of lands in Moyallen 31st May 1817
13. PRONI D4137/B/5 Letters to Alexander Stewart 1826-1838
14. PRONI D1626/13 Letter from tenantry to George Bowen on his resignation c1865
15. Taylor and Skinner’s Map of the Roads of Ireland 1777
16. 1901 census online
17. 1911 census online
18. Belfast Newsletter 13th April 1866
19. Belfast Newsletter 3rd May 1867
20. Belfast Newsletter 19th August 1873
21. Belfast Newsletter 27th August 1873

Secondary Sources

1. Carpenter A “Verse in English from eighteenth-century Ireland” Cork University Press, 1998
2. Logan, R A “A Window on the Past, A History of Gilford County Down” Banbridge Chronicle, (n.d.)
3. Rankin, K “The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley, The story of their families” Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2007
4. www.banbridge.com

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
D. Plan Form
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Detached three-bay two-storey rendered house, built c1875, possibly originating c1777, with two formal elevations and a multi-bay two-storey return added c.1910. L-shaped on plan and set on an elevated site within landscaped grounds, accessed via a long avenue with a range of two-storey rubblestone outbuildings to the north and walled garden to the northeast. Formerly called Lawrencetown House and the property of a significant landlord in Cromwellian times, the estate also has connections with the linen industry in the district, with one of the major linen families locally taking ownership in the later Nineteenth century. The building is now in use as a religious educational institution (since 1981), while maintaining the grounds as a parkland. A former country residence on the site of a late eighteenth-century house, much original fabric and detailing survives and the outbuildings, walled garden and mature parkland setting add interest to the site. This is a good example of the type of developed country house with early origins that is somewhat unusual in the area.