Aghaderg Glebe

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

An asymmetrical two-storey over basement three-bay former Glebe House, built c.1800 with west wing added c.1860, remodelled c.1950; located to east of Loughbrickland village overlooking Lough Brickland. Rectangular on plan with front porch and return to rear, set in extensive gardens with outbuildings to rear.

Pitched natural slate roof, hipped over west wing, partially concealed by an eaves cornice and stone blocking course; several rendered chimneystacks with octagonal clay pots. Concealed gutters, cast-iron downpipes and hopper heads. Ruled-and-lined rendered walling with stepped quoins; V-channelled granite quoins and plinth to west wing. Timber sliding sash windows to principal elevations, tripartite (2/2, 6/6, 2/2) to main elevation, slightly diminished in height to first floor; twinned 4/4 sashes to canted bay at west wing, with 2/2 sashes to cheeks, divided by dressed granite mullions; 6/6 to side elevations; variety of sashes and metal-framed casements to rear.

Principal elevation faces south and is extended by the west wing to left. The main elevation is symmetrical three-openings wide arranged about a central single-storey flat roofed porch fronting the former entrance. Porch is plainly detailed with pilaster strips to corners supporting an entablature; lit by a 6/6 (wide central panes) window to south, accessed at left cheek by a four-panelled timber door with round-arched margined fanlight; cast-iron door furniture, granite step and cast-iron bootscraper. Original entrance set in wide elliptical opening; six-flat-panelled timber door with cast-iron door furniture, ornate geometric sidelights and fanlight, pilaster frame. The west wing is lit by a two-storey canted bay in dressed granite.

West elevation has two windows to each floor.

The rear elevation is abutted by a two-storey over basement return to left bay. Right bay (West wing) is lit by a 4/4 bi-partite window to first floor left and multi-pane metal casements to ground floor- one to centre (narrow) and one to left; central bay is abutted by a flat-roofed stairwell extension lit to first floor by a large multi-pane metal casement and having a diminutive multi-pane metal casement beneath with timber entrance door to right.
The return is lit to either side by a variety of windows to each floor (basement exposed to gable and east cheek only).
West cheek comprises two windows to first floor; ground floor mostly abutted by a flat roofed single storey extension (two multi-pane windows at different levels and of different sizes to west face, timber glazed door to right cheek, left cheek blank).
Gable comprises cast-concrete external stair leading to a glazed timber door at ground floor flanked by a metal casement window to right and a blocked-up opening to left; two number timber casement windows to basement, one directly under external stair and one to left; heavy string course to first floor level, remainder blank.
Variety of openings to east cheek; four metal casement windows to first floor, three to ground floor (that to centre is deeply recessed) and two timber doors to basement with 1/1 timber sliding sash (bottom sash timber sheeted) to far left and timber casement window to far right.

East elevation is over basement, which is accessed by a glazed timber door to right and lit by a 6/6 window to left; the only other opening is a slim metal casement to first floor right.

Setting:
Landscaped
setting, set well back from but visible from the road. Sloping tarmac courtyard to rear, with two outbuildings to east, further outbuildings to north and north east (HB17/03/001B). Courtyard fully enclosed by a rubble stone wall and accessed at north side by a pair of timber gates supported by a pair of square piers with brick quoins having pyramidal caps inset with granite pebbles. West entrance with piers only. Extensive gardens to west, south and east, generally lawn with mature trees and shrubs; woodland setting with a burn to east side. Tarmac forecourt, accessed by a lane from public road at west, through a pair of metal gates on square granite piers with pyramidal caps. Alcoved entrance wall with soldier coping.

Roof: Slate
Walling: Render
Windows: Timber / metal
RWG: Cast iron

Historical information

The house was erected as a glebe house in 1801 and enlarged by the addition of a wing in 1857. In the 1950s the house was sold to the Ferguson family who remodelled the rear of the dwelling.

Lewis states that the glebe house is a ‘handsome residence; the Board [of First Fruits], in 1801, gave £100 towards its erection, and also purchased a glebe of 24 acres for the vicar.’ The glebe house was built for Joseph McCormick, son of a Newry merchant, who became vicar in 1798. It passed to Dominick Edward Blake of County Galway in 1814 and James Saurin, later Archdeacon of Dromore and son of the Bishop of Dromore, in 1823. The next incumbent, in 1826, was Edward Richards who was the previous vicar’s brother-in-law, having married James Saurin’s sister in 1824. Rev Edward Richards is listed as the occupier in the Townland Valuation of 1828-40 and dimensions are given for the house, return and basement and three outbuildings, one of which is thatched. The ‘Glebe House’ is shown captioned on the first edition OS map of 1833 as a rectangular building with return and a number of outbuildings to the rear. The buildings are valued at £17.

At the time of Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64) the resident is Jeffry Lefroy, vicar from 1836 to 1886 and later Dean of Dromore. The second edition OS map (1859) shows that the house has been enlarged by the addition of a wing to the west and the parish history notes that this addition, built in 1857, housed a ‘good-sized’ study with a bedroom and dressing room of corresponding size overhead. The study opened by folding doors into the drawing room. (Little; Rankin) A ‘gate lodge’ (now gone) has also been added. The buildings are now valued at £30 and the valuer comments that the house is a ‘very neat concern, nicely situated’. Dimensions are given for the house and a two-storey outbuilding. Jeffry Leffroy was the son of Thomas Langlois Lefroy (1776-1869), Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1852 to 1866 and the father of George who became Bishop of Lahore and Metropolitan of India. (Clergy of Down and Dromore) Thomas Langlois Lefroy was romantically linked in his youth to Jane Austen, the novelist, and the suggestion has been made that he could have been the model for the character of Mr Darcy. (Dictionary of Irish Biography) The Lefroy family museum is at Carrig Glas Manor, Longford. (Magennis) Jeffry Lefroy married Helena Trench in 1844 and two of their nine children wrote a book for private circulation about their memories of growing up at the glebe house, ‘a very small and unpretending house...it must have seemed a tiny home to our father and mother who had both been used all their lives to much roomier quarters’. (Rankin)

In 1886 the house passed to Rev Henry William Lett, who later became Chancellor of Dromore. He was a noted antiquary and an authority on botany, especially mosses, publishing ‘The Fungi of Northern Ireland’ in 1885, as a supplement to the proceedings of the Belfast Field Club. (Clergy of Down and Dromore) He was resident in 1901 but the census for the glebe is missing. The 1911 census shows him resident with his wife and adult daughter, together with three servants, young girls from Cavan, Sligo and Wicklow who are employed as a cook, a parlour maid and a general domestic servant. H W Lett died in 1920 and a lengthy obituary appeared in the Irish Naturalist written by Robert Lloyd Praeger, Ireland’s greatest field botanist and with whom Lett worked on the Clare Island survey while in his 70s. Praeger draws attention to Lett’s many publications on mosses and hepatics and a bramble Rubus Lettii, which bears his name. According to Praeger, he was ‘a thorough field naturalist, with that eye for likely country that only comes with experience, and seldom comes fully to any but the country-bred’. (Irish Naturalist)

The next incumbent was Thomas Martin, a native of Fivemiletown, who was followed by John William Applebe and Edward Burns.

The Glebe house was sold in 1950 to Colonel James Dickson Ferguson OBE DL, a director of Thomas Ferguson & Co Ltd and Ballievey Bleaching Co Ltd who restored the house as a private family home, replacing the rear return and refenestrating the rear elevation. The house was listed in 1977 and remains in the ownership of the Ferguson family. (Rankin; HB file)

References:

Primary Sources

1. PRONI OS/6/3/34/1 First Edition OS Map 1833
2. PRONI OS/6/3/34/2 Second Edition OS map 1859
3. PRONI OS/6/3/34/3 Third Edition OS Map 1902-3
4. PRONI OS/6/3/34/4 Fourth Edition OS Map 1903-18
5. PRONI VAL/1/B/351 Townland Valuation (1828-40)
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/55D Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64)
7. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/18A-E Annual Revisions (1864-1930)
8. Irish Naturalist, Vol 30, No 4, 1921

Secondary Sources
1. Knox, Alexander, M.D. “A History of the County of Down” Dublin: Hodges, Foster & Co, 1875
2. Lewis, Samuel. “A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland” London: S. Lewis & Co., 1837.
3. Little, Rev G N “Historical Highlights: Parish of Aghaderg” Banbridge Chronicle Press, 1989
4. Magennis, P “Banbridge, An Illustrated History and Companion” Donaghadee, Cottage Publications, 1996
5. McGuire, J and Quinn, J, eds “Dictionary of Irish Biography” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Royal Irish
Academy, 2009
6. Rankin, F., Leslie, Canon, J.B., Swanzy, Dean H.B. “Clergy of Down and Dromore” Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation,
1996
7. 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
I. Quality and survival of Interior
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

X. Local Interest

Evaluation

Aghaderg Glebe is a substantial two storey late-Georgian former Glebe House, built c.1800, extended to west c.1860 and restored and refurbished c.1950. The house occupies a prominent setting overlooking Lough Brickland to south, in an extensive landscaped setting. It is a well-proportioned house, originally composed on symmetrical plan, and retaining the original entrance within a later porch addition. Most of its historic fabric and detailing survives and it is an interesting example of a Georgian extended in Victorian times. Traditionally constructed outbuildings (HB17/03/001B) and an original setting add to the interest of the house. The house was originally associated with St Mellan's Parish Church, Loughbrickland (HB17/03/006) and has later associations with local industrialists.

General comments

Please note this record has been renumbered it was previously recorded as HB17/03/001