The Palantine

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A detached three-bay two-storey Italianate house, built c.1870, located off Ballypalady Road. Rectangular on plan with projecting gabled central bay. Pitched natural slate roof with blue/black clay roll-top ridge tiles, rendered chimneystacks to gables with moulded caps, rendered verges. Walling is painted smooth rendered over plinth, moulded cornice, sill courses to both floors, torus-moulded stringcourse between floors; small square turrets to corners. Windows are square-headed timber 1/1 sliding sashes with stop-end-chamfered reveals.

Front elevation exposed sections have paired windows. Projecting bay ground floor has pendant and scrollwork flanking segmental arch-headed painted timber bolection-moulded three panel double-leaf door with overlight; first floor has round-headed window in a round-headed recess with a splayed apron below the sill course. Left cheek has one window to each floor.

Setting

The house is situated in extensive grounds with a paved forecourt amidst several mature trees and a decorative painted cast-iron vehicular double gate. There is also a quadrangular court of single- and one-and-a-half stories outbuildings located to the rear of the house. The roofs are pitched natural slate and the single-storey outbuildings are all rendered, the walling for the one-and-a-half-storey outbuildings is rubble stone.

Roof: Slate (Unsure if natural or artificial)
Walling: Painted smooth render
Windows: Square-headed painted timber 1/1 sash
Rainwater Goods: Not visible

Historical information

On the first edition OS map of 1834 several buildings are shown on the site, which is captioned ‘Palantine’, however these buildings are smaller than the existing structure. They comprise one building to the northeast, one to the southwest and one to the northwest. The large L-plan building is not shown on the map. The second edition OS map of 1857 shows the building at southwest now enlarged. It is further extended to southwest in the 1902 edition, with a further building having been constructed at southeast. The sixth edition OS map of 1920 shows the building in its current form.

Details for the house could not be found in the Townland Valuation of 1834, the land however is detailed as 'arable good strong clay land [almost high] facing the north, subsoil clay with waste at houses’. Griffiths Valuation of 1859 records a house on lands valued at £115, with the house valued separately at £18. The occupier is recorded as Thomas Stephenson, and the lessor is the Marquis of Donegall.

The Chesney family lived here until 1973. Information from family members (2009) indicates that the building (built in 1873) shown in the photograph is but one half of the actual house.
This front half of four rooms (2 x bedrooms, plus a drawing room and a dining room with most elaborately decorated ceilings).

It is complimented, in parallel, with a much older building comprising on the ground floor a kitchen plus pantry etc, dairy room etc, above which, via two staircases, are 3 bedrooms, plus a minute "maid's room". Thus there are two separate pitched natural slate roof systems with a valley in between.

Denis O'D Hanna, the noted architect, during an advisory visit in the late 1960s, assessed this older building, as dating back to 1680/1690.

Outside, past the farmyard outbuildings, there should still be evidence of a waterwheel (still operating in the late 1960s) plus a long mill race.

Further conversations with the daughters of the previous owner of The Palantine have revealed that a large field somewhere behind the house, to the right, is listed in the deeds as 'The Vine Yard'. Local history talked of it once, centuries ago, being planted with a variety of grapes which had flourished in Germany.
References

Primary Sources:

1. PRONI OS/6/1/51/1 – First edition OS map (1832)
2. PRONI OS/6/1/51/2 - Second edition OS map (1857)
3. PRONI OS/6/1/51/3 -Third edition OS map (1902)
4. PRONI OS/6/1/51/6 - Sixth edition OS map (1920)
5. PRONI VAL/1/A/51-Townland Valuation Map (1834)
5. PRONI VAL/1/B/51-Townland Valuation Map (1834)
5. PRONI VAL/2/A/1/51A -Griffiths Valuation Map (1859)
6. PRONI VAL/2/B/1/11-Griffiths Valuation Fieldbook (1859)

Secondary Sources

1. Member of HBC 2009

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

A detached three-bay two-storey nineteenth-century house with good quality Italianate detailing, located in an attractive rural setting and retaining impressive entrance gates. Attendant well-preserved outbuildings are of earlier appearance and add to the historic interest of the site.