Tullycarnaught Orange Hall

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A detached asymmetrical single-storey painted roughcast rendered rural Orange Hall; dated 1917 and located to the east side of Drone Hill Road east of Banbridge. Rectangular on plan and facing northwest on a small plot on the north bank of the River Bann.

Pitched natural slate roof with angled ridge tiles and tiled raised verges; smooth rendered chimneystacks to gables. Cast-iron rainwater goods on projecting eaves. Walling limewashed lime render (unpainted roughcast to SE and SW). Square-headed window openings are boarded with projecting painted masonry sills.

Principal elevation facing northwest is four openings wide; three evenly-spaced windows to right of timber-sheeted entrance door with cast-iron door knob; surmounted by inscribed date stone in segmental-headed recess, reading “TULLYCONNAUGHT/ ORANGE HALL/ ERECTED A.D.1917”. Three painted brick infills at ground right.

The northeast gable is blank.

The southeast (rear) elevation has a window opening at right with concrete block infill.

The southwest gable is blank.

Setting

Situated on a small plot south of Castlewellan Road and accessed via Drone Hill Road, on the north bank of the River Bann. Situated adjacent to a small development of two-storey detached houses to west. Tarmacadam laneway to north leads to small agricultural unit enclosed by mature trees. Front entrance is enclosed by a set of roughcast-rendered walls with square piers having pointed caps; original cast and wrought-iron latch-gate with emblematic detailing; gravelled off-road parking area to left.

Roof: Natural slate
Walling: Roughcast
Windows: Boarded
RWG: Cast-iron

Historical information

Tullyconnaught Orange Hall is dated 1917 and is first shown, uncaptioned, on the OS map edition dating from the 1960s/70s. The hall is built on the site of a ‘Corn Mill’ that appears on the second edition OS map of 1859 and may incorporate some of the fabric of this earlier building.

The corn mill and the land on which it stood was the property of the Mulligan family, linen bleachers and beetlers of Tullyconnaught who built works adjacent to the Corbet Lough in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Corbet Lough was a storage lake built in 1836, in order to store water that could be released back into the Bann as needed for the linen industry. (Rankin) A mill race formerly powered the corn mill, but this is no longer present.

The Orange Hall first enters valuation records in 1920 at a valuation of £2.10s and is leased from Martha Mulligan. Dimensions are given for the building and later records show that at one end, under the Hall itself, was living accommodation for a caretaker. In the First General Revaluation of 1933/4 the Hall was revalued at £3. The ‘one-roomed hall’, measuring 45x19x12 is described as an ‘old building, poor finish and condition’ with a ground floor occupied as a house. The caretaker was Miss Elizabeth Fordyce, later James Henry Dunlop and the accommodation, a kitchen and a bedroom of dimensions 19x19x7 was valued at £1.5s. A rent of 2s per week was paid.

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/12/B/16/6A-H Annual Revisions (1864-1930)
6. PRONI VAL/3/C/4/1 First General Revaluation (1933-57)
7. PRONI VAL/3/D/4/3/E/7 First General Revaluation (1933-57)

Secondary Sources

1. Rankin, K “The Linen Houses of the Bann Valley, The story of their families” Belfast, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2007

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A detached single-storey limewashed lime rendered rural Orange Hall, dated 1917. A modest example of a traditionally built rural Orange Hall, which appears to have largely retained its original character and detailing. However, it is not of special architectural or historic interest.