59 Circular Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A one-and-a-half storey two-bay house pre-dating 1833, rectangular linear plan form with abutting and detached outbuildings. Located south of the Circular Road approximately 4 miles south east of Banbridge.

Pitched natural slate roofing with clay ridge tiles and concrete skews. Roughcast rendered chimney with corbelled cap and flaunching with no pots. Corbelled eaves with metal rainwater goods and drive-in brackets (uPVC replacement). Lime washed lime render over rubble masonry walling. Timber framed 6/6 sliding sash windows with horns, exposed sash-boxes and painted masonry cills (unless otherwise stated). Five-panelled timber door with surface fixed mouldings with exposed timber frame and plinth blocks.

The principal elevation faces north and is asymmetrically arranged. The front door and window left located on the left bay with a single window to the right bay. Recessed round-headed arches over windows and door. Cast-iron roof light to right.

The left gable has a single replacement timber casement attic window located to the left. The ground floor is largely abutted by a single-storey shed with corrugated-iron roof and large timber sheeted door addressing the front.

The rear elevation is partially embedded into the rising landscape. Two varying replacement timber casement windows and a cast-iron roof light to left.

The right gable is symmetrically arranged with a single replacement timber casement attic window.

Setting

Elevated site within a rural
setting, accessed from the road by a lane which sweeps across the principal elevation. Complex of double-height outbuildings comprising a linear block extended beyond the east gable with a further block orientated perpendicular to the dwelling. Smaller single-storey shed to the rear of the site running parallel to the dwelling. The outbuildings have natural slate roofing and lime render over rubble masonry walling; timber sheeted doors and replacement sawn timber roof structures. Rubble masony cylindrical piers carrying wrought iron field gates to the south and west.

Roofing: Natural slate
Walling: Lrender
Window: Timber
RWG: Metal

Historical information

Buildings are shown on the site on the first edition OS map of 1833 which correspond to those present on the site today, a one and a half storey dwelling with attached outbuilding and a further substantial outbuilding to the east. Little alteration has taken place over the years, except that the house and outbuilding are shown as separate in 1859 and again in the map edition dating from the 1960s/70s, indicating that the structure connecting the house and outbuilding has, at times, been demolished and rebuilt.

The house is listed in the Townland Valuation (1828-40) as the home of Thomas McMurray, a house and offices valued at £4.18s. Dimensions are given for a slated house and two single-storey thatched outbuildings.

At the time of Griffith’s Valuation (1856-64) Thomas McMurray continued in residence and was paying a rent of £18 a year to the Marquess of Downshire. The house and offices stood on a plot of over 19 acres and were valued at £5. Thomas McMurray died on 19th July 1874 and in his will bequeathed the house ‘as it now stands with all the furniture together with the office houses and garden and the field behind the stack yard’ to his wife ‘to be held by her during her life providing she remains unmarried…and also the best cow belonging to me at my decease’. Thomas McMurray owned property in Banbridge from which he obtained rents which were left to his daughter Eliza. The farm was taken over by McMurray’s widow Jane in 1876 and in 1887 the house was designated a caretaker’s house, but it is unclear to what this relates. Subsequent tenants were James Smyth (1889) who died on 7th July 1897 and Isabella Smyth (1899) his widow.

At the time of the 1901 census, 60-year-old farmer and widow Isabella Smyth was living at the house with her three adult children. Her older son was a blacksmith. The house has five rooms and is designated 2nd class. The house could not be identified in the 1911 census but by 1912 it was again in the hands of the McMurray family before passing to Thomas McAnerney in 1913. McAnerney became the owner in fee of the property under land purchase legislation in 1915. In the 1930s the accommodation was listed as a reception kitchen and pantry and two bedrooms on the top floor. The house has not been lived in for some time and is currently falling into a state of disrepair.

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/352 Townland Valuation (1828-40)
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/3/48A Griffiths Valuation (1861)
7. PRONI VAL/12/B/16/25A-G Annual Revisions (1864-1929)
8. PRONI VAL/3/C/4/1 First General Revaluation (1936-57)
9. PRONI VAL/3/D/4/3/A/6 First General Revaluation (1933-57)
10. 1901 census online
11. 1911 census online
12. PRONI Will of Thomas McMurray, died 19th July 1874
13. PRONI Will of James Smyth, died 7th July 1897

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A one-and-a-half storey two-bay traditionally constructed dwelling pre-dating 1833, is largely characterised by the attempts to formalise its appearance with Georgian sash windows and recessed arches. The interior has lost a significant proportion of the original fabric although the layout remains in principal. The setting is of some interest with a complex of outbuildings and other features. Although of local interest, and increasingly rare, insufficient fabric remains to merit listing.