Outbuildings

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A group of traditionally constructed nineteenth-century outbuildings located to the rear of Aghaderg Glebe (HB17/03/001A). Dispersed group comprising a two-storey stable and single storey store bounding the east side of a courtyard to rear of main house. Byre to north and coach house to north-west.

Outbuildings have pitched natural slate roofs; all are of rubble stone construction, laid to rough courses with roughly cut granite quoins and brick dressings to openings. Openings are timber sheeted.

Stable block:

To east of the courtyard is a stable block with loft over and gable chimneys; yard facing elevation (north-west) has a large segmental-arched vehicular opening to left; to right of centre and right are timber sheeted doors on granite plinth blocks, that to right of centre flanked by 20-pane fixed windows with granite cills; all ground floor openings with segmental brick relieving arches; loft with 12-pane window over vehicular opening and door to far right; louvred loading door offset to right of centre, flanked by ventilation slits.
The north-east gable has a first floor loading door accessed by a set of external stone steps.
Rear elevation (south-east) has a 12 pane window to right and two ventilation slits to centre at first floor, abutted at ground floor by a lean-to woodshed (right bay roofless); south-east face comprises single square-headed door opening (no door) to roofless bay, four large square-headed openings with continuous timber lintel to south-east face (left two openings divided by a timber post in the round); left cheek blank; right cheek has a single bricked up window opening (cill remains).
South-west gable has a 20-pane window to ground floor; remainder blank.

Cart house:

To right of the stable block, and seperated by an entry with a metal gate is a cart house, detailed as stable block with 20 pane window to right and square-headed vehicle doors to left. Partially-engaged circular pier abuts south-west gable to left. Blocked up brick dressed segmental arched opening to apex of north-east and south-west gables. Rear south-east abutted by a slate roofed lean-to; exposed section blank. South-east face of lean-to blank; left cheek has a timber sheeted door to left and a diminutive four pane window to right; right cheek not viewed.

Byre with attached store:

Further to north, set in rear lawn, is a byre with attached store; South-west elevation has two segmental-arched vehicle doors to right of centre; north-west gable has two semi-circular-arched openings, that to left has a timber sheeted door, that to right is brick-infilled. Rear (north-east) has three equally spaces square-headed metal casement windows. South-east gable not viewed.

Coach house:

Coach house to north of site accessed by a tarmac drive to west of house. Segmental-arched double doors to south-west gable; south-east elevation comprises square-headed timber sheeted half door left of centre with brick dressings and relieving arch; rear (north-east) gable blank; north-west elevation not viewed. Metal gate attached to south-east with square rubble-stone pier with brick dressings and pyramidal top.

Setting:
Main house (HB17/03/001A) to south. Landscaped
setting, set well back from but visible from the road. Sloping tarmac courtyard to rear 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: Natural slate
Walling: Stone / Brick
Windows: Timber
RWG: Cast iron

Historical information

Nineteenth century OS maps show that outbuildings were added and removed at Aghaderg Glebe over the years and these together with the dimensions given in valuation records allow estimated dates to be given to the structures that remain today. A building is shown on the site of the two-storey stable on the first edition OS map of 1834, however valuation records show that this was initially a single-storey, thatched structure which had been rebuilt with two storeys by the time of Griffith’s Valuation (c.1860). The contemporary OS map suggests that the single-storey lean-to structure at the rear and the cart-house to the south had also been added by this date, although it is possible that the single-storey lean-to was actually the original building on the site. A building is shown on the site of the store on the first edition (1834) while the byre is first shown on the third edition OS map of 1902-3 and therefore dates from the second half of the nineteenth century.

Aghaderg Glebe house was built at the turn of the nineteenth century and Lewis describes it as 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) Jeffry Lefroy’s father, 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

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

A group of traditionally constructed stone nineteenth-century outbuildings at Aghaderg Glebe (HB17/03/001A), located to the rear of the main house, former rectory to St Mellan’s Parish Church, Loughbrickland (HB17/03/006) and later associated with local industrialists. The outbuildings are well preserved, with much historic fabric and character. They are a good example of ancillary buildings demonstrating the activities related to a significant house.

General comments

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