The Barn House, No 8 The Adam Yard, Castle Upton, Templepatrick, Co Antrim, BT39 0BE

The Barn House is a former stable building, now converted to residential use, forming part of the Adam Yard complex at Castle Upton, Templepatrick, County Antrim. It occupies three bays on the east range of the north yard of this Grade A listed complex, and was built around 1790 to designs by Robert Adam.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Castle Upton estate is thought to contain fragments of a 13th-century fortified Priory of the Knights of St John. The late medieval castle, a significant portion of which survives today, was built by Sir Robert and Humphrey Norton around 1610. The Plantation Commissioners' report of that year recorded: "we beheald materialles sufficient to finish a faire castle already built two stories high with two greate Towres of flankers the worke of Humfrey Northon Lieutenant of the Lo: Deputies foot companie, at a place called Tymple Patricke upon the said Sir Arthur Chichester's lande by the River of Sixmylewater. He means to build a stonge bawne of lyme and stone about it towards w'ch said Sir Arthur gives 100 li ster and a lease of the lands for many yeares at a small rent." The castle was sold in 1625 to Captain Henry Upton of Cornwall, later Viscount Templeton, whose family retained it until the early 20th century.

Clotworthy Upton, the first Lord Templeton, and his son, later the first Viscount, commissioned Robert Adam in 1783 to remodel the house "with a castle air." Adam never visited Ireland, and many of his proposed works were not carried out; nevertheless, the asymmetrical castellations are notable, particularly given that the picturesque castellated style was only just becoming fashionable at the time, when classical symmetry was still highly regarded. Works included raising the two round towers, which were finished with conical roofs, and the addition of a wing with a further round tower. The stable complex is entirely Adam's work and is rigidly symmetrical, as is the neo-classical mausoleum on the estate, which features typical Adam detailing. Original drawings are held in the Soane Museum in London. According to Lady Kinahan, a former owner, the Stable Yard is an exact replica of the old Fish Market in Edinburgh, which was demolished in 1930. When the Kinahan family purchased the estate in 1963, the yard was in a state of advanced decay and housed a number of pigsties. The 1860 Griffith's Valuation valued the estate at £207. The yard was converted to housing between 1998 and 2000, involving remodelling and sympathetic renovation.

ARCHITECTURAL OVERVIEW

The Adam Yard as a whole is a detached, symmetrical, quadrangular-plan range of two-storey, multi-bay stone former stable buildings. It comprises a main arched entrance clock tower to the south, a further arched rear entrance block to the north, and a central range on an east-west axis with a further arched tower flanked by a pair of square-plan blocks. Six square-plan towers with chamfered corners define the corners of the two yards. The complex was renovated and converted to twelve dwellings between 1988 and 2000.

ROOFS AND SPIRES

Roofs are covered in natural slate with lead to the ridge rolls. They are pitched over the linear sections — which include several skylights — hipped over the towers and over the north and south arched entrance blocks. The entrance clock tower has an octagonal-plan spire with lead ridges, natural slate to the lower half and metal louvres to the upper half, surmounted by a lead globe and weather vane. The central arched tower has a square-plan lead spire added around 2008.

PARAPETS AND EXTERNAL DETAILING

The south and central arched towers and five of the six corner towers (all except that to the northwest) have crenellated parapet walls with sandstone coping, resting on a corbelled course of redbrick. This parapet treatment is also employed along the front (south) elevation of the two linear ranges, which feature slender arched recesses with redbrick heads. The central arched tower has four bartizans at its corners, formed in redbrick with sandstone corbelling and replacement sandstone capstones.

Replacement cast-iron rainwater goods on iron drive-through brackets serve the projecting rubblestone eaves courses, with some lead hoppers. Redbrick chimneystacks have octagonal clay pots and lead flashing. Walling throughout is in coursed and snecked rubblestone with lime pointing and a projecting rubblestone plinth course.

The south entrance tower is flanked on both elevations by a pair of full-height projecting stone piers with a parapet wall and sandstone coping on a redbrick corbelled course. These piers have blind balistrariae to the upper stage and blind loopholes to the lower stage on both elevations. Balistrariae also adorn the outward-facing chamfered corners of the four outer towers, while the two front corner towers each have a double-height round-headed recess to their south-facing elevations. The rear entrance block has a series of balistrariae to the ground floor of its south elevation, some glazed to the interior wall, while the north elevation has loophole openings to the ground floor, also glazed to the interior wall.

WINDOWS AND DOORS

Windows are generally square-headed with rendered reveals, concrete sills, and timber sash windows with exposed sash boxes, installed around 2000. Between the paired piers flanking the arched entrance tower is a slender round-headed window opening to the ground floor fitted with 4/4 timber sash windows, with slender 4/4 timber sash windows to the first floor. The window openings facing the two yards are 6/6 timber sash to the ground floor with oculi openings to the first floor, formed in redbrick with circular timber casement windows. Several large round-headed window openings occupy former carriage arch openings to the central linear range, with voussoired stone arches and multi-pane timber windows incorporating integrated fanlights. The linear east and west ranges each have a lucarne opening at the centre of the range facing into the yards, with timber weatherboard to the gable and timber casement windows. Some tripartite sash windows have been inserted to the outward-facing elevations, comprising a central 6/6 flanked by 4/4 timber sash windows. To the first floor of the outward-facing elevations are 3/6 and 6/3 timber sash windows.

The main south entrance clock tower has a large round-headed carriage arch with a sandstone architrave surround, plinth blocks and impost blocks. Above impost level is a timber panel with glazing, while a pair of 19th-century vertically-sheeted timber doors on iron hinges give access to the yard. The walls and soffit within the arch are smooth lime rendered, with a small square-headed door opening to either side fitted with replacement timber panelled doors. Door openings are generally square-headed with multi-paned glazed timber doors, some double-leaf. Within the double-height recesses on the corner towers of the front south elevation is a round-headed door opening formed in voussoired stone, fitted with double-leaf multi-paned timber glazed doors with Gothick tracery fanlights, and an oculus to the upper stage with circular timber casement windows.

SETTING AND GROUNDS

The stable range, known as the Adam Yard, is set to the east of Castle Upton and accessed by a long tree-lined avenue running perpendicular to the main street of Templepatrick (the Belfast Road). The two yards are surfaced in gravel. The rear (north) yard contains a flower bed formed in stone setts in the shape of a Prussian iron cross, with a carved stone pedestal and iron sundial on a moulded redbrick base. Stone flags surround the east, north and west elevations. To the north of the rear is a lawned area with a stone ha-ha and a small stone bridge, with a bitmac driveway providing vehicular access to the north yard. To the northeast stands a seven-bay single-storey stone-clad garage built around 2000, abutting the wall of the Upton graveyard.