Horse walk at 13 Ballynacooley Road

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Remains of a former horse walk apparatus next to a long -possibly pre 1835- single storey rubble-built vernacular house / outbuilding, but with no indication of the actual ‘walk’ platform itself.

The remains and the outbuilding are sited to the E side of no.12 Ballnacooley Road, roughly 3½ miles SW of Randallstown.

It is difficult to discern much of this horse walk. To the W side of the field within which it presumably stood there is a long single storey rubble-built building which appears to have originally been a house with outbuildings, but which appears to have most recently served solely as the latter, and is now derelict and in very poor condition. It has a partly cement rendered façade and a chimney-less corrugated asbestos roof which, (the cement render to the eaves suggests), was raised at some point. To both the E and W elevations there is and an irregular series of window and doorway openings, the windows frameless (or merely hanging on to the badly dilapidated remnants of frames), but with some of the doorways to the W still with plain timber-sheeted doors. Much of the façade is covered in creeping plant growth and not insignificant amounts of the rubble walling have fallen away.

On the E side of the building, to the right of the centre point of the elevation, there is a shallow narrow trench roughly a metre in length within which there is a section of a narrow octagonal iron (or steel) shaft. This extends from the foundations of the building, disappearing within (or under the floor of) the building itself. The shaft extends for roughly half a metre from the wall and is supported on a cast iron bracket which is itself set on some loose bricks.

Set a few metres to the NW of the shaft is a relatively large cast iron cog with a bracket under it, all set on some loose concrete bricks. This assemblage is not connected to any other machinery.

There is a long flat metal bar lying a few metres away from the cog, which (some earlier photographs of this site suggest) was originally attached to the cog and (presumably) stretched from the cog to the yoke for the horse.

Apart from the above scattered pieces of machinery there is no other external evidence of the horse walk in the sense that there is no platform on which the horse would have walked, or no evidence of any kind of structure covering such a platform (though the walks themselves were usually open). In fact, apart from the above mentioned pieces of machinery, there is little external evidence to confirm that a horse walk existed on this site.

Historical information

Buildings matching the position of the present structure and the house to the immediate west side (on the roadside) are shown on the OS map of 1832-33, however the building shown on the site of that described above appears slightly shorter than the present. Neither building in the grouping is recorded in the first valuation of c.1835, but both are noted in that of 1859 as the homes of a Jane Donnelly and a William Young. The valuers do not say who occupied which house, an unfortunate omission, for although an 1878 entry in a later valuation book states that the house formerly occupied by Jane Donnelly was knocked down in that year and a new one (seemingly) rebuilt on the same site, we do not know to which property they are referring. We do know, however, that both properties were in the hands of a James Charleton in 1914 and remained as such until the 1930s at least.

As regards to the horse walk, none of the 6in OS maps up to and including that of 1921 show any evidence of its existence, nor is it mentioned by the valuers. This does not preclude its presence, however as such devices were generally overlooked by the valuers if they were not contained inside a structure (and many –including, it seems, this one- were not) and many were not marked on OS maps. The surviving machinery suggests the device which appears to have operated on this site did so in the late 19th / early 20th century,

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI OS/6/1/49/1 OS map, Co Antrim sh 49, 1832-33
2 PRONI OS/6/1/49/2 OS map, Co Antrim sh 49, 1857
3 PRONI VAL/2B/1/70 Second valuation, Cranfield parish, 1859
4 PRONI VAL/12B/1/15A-F Annual valuation revision books, Cranfield ED etc., 1864-1929
5 PRONI OS/6/1/49/3 OS map, Co Antrim sh 49, c.1904
6 PRONI OS/6/1/49/4 OS map, Co Antrim, sh 49, 1921

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Remains of a former horse walk apparatus next to a long -possibly pre 1835- single storey rubble-built vernacular house.