The Old Rectory, 40 Oldstone Road, Muckamore, Antrim, BT41 4PY, Co Antrim

The Old Rectory is an early Victorian house built in an ornamental Italianate style, notable for its distinctive proportions, plan form and spatial organisation. It dates from the 1840s and appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1857. It was built by the Thompson family of Muckamore Abbey as the rectory for St Jude's Church of Ireland church, and is stylistically attributable to the prominent Irish architect Charles Lanyon, who had earlier designed that church. The Dublin Builder of 1 July 1865 refers to the Thompson family having built the parsonage. The building is of considerable local interest as a probable work by Lanyon, who was active elsewhere in this locality.

The house is T-shaped in plan, with a single-storey, three-bay front block in the Italianate style and a three-storey return to the rear, which is set within a sunken basement area. The main entrance front faces south-east.

EXTERIOR — FRONT BLOCK

The entrance elevation is symmetrical, with one window to each side of a central projecting porch. The roof is covered in Bangor blue slates laid in regular courses, with terracotta ridge tiles and overhanging eaves carried on shaped brackets with a flat plastered soffit. Gutters are moulded cast iron with cast iron downpipes. On the entrance front, centred on the front porch and rising behind the ridge of the main roof on the rear wall of the front block, is a broad chimney stack. This is smoothly cement-rendered with a projecting moulded cornice and retains its six original octagonal chimney pots.

The walls throughout the front block are smooth rendered, lined and blocked, with a moulded projecting plinth, a moulded stringcourse below the eaves brackets, and slightly projecting broad end piers at each extremity. The entrance porch is gabled with a pediment supported on a shaped rendered bracket on its front face, above a semi-circular arched window set within a semi-circular arched recess. This window is an arched timber sliding sash, vertically hung, with six-over-six panes and horns, and radial lights to the head. The left-hand side of the porch contains a shallow semi-circular arched recess. The right-hand side contains the entrance door: an original rectangular timber four-panel door surmounted by a radial fanlight, set in a semi-circular arched recess, with a modern tiled doorstep and modern black plastic lamps mounted on the wall to each side.

The wall to each side of the porch contains a large Venetian window — one of the house's most striking features, with an unusually palatial display of two such windows to each of the main front rooms. Each Venetian window has an arched timber central light, sashed two-over-one with margin panes and without horns, and rectangular timber sidelights sashed one-over-one with margins and without horns. Each is set in a raised, lugged, smooth rendered surround with rectangular mullions, rising from a deep projecting bracketed sandstone cill whose edges have been repaired in cement.

The left-hand gable of the front block is rendered in the same manner as the entrance front but without the stringcourse. It has overhanging verges with timber bargeboards on shaped brackets, and the moulded gutters and soffits return from the front and rear elevations for a short distance to form an open pedimental feature to the gable. A decorative moulded cartouche sits in the apex above a large Venetian window similar to those on the entrance front, with the addition of a bracketed cornice over the central light; the bottom portion of the scroll of each bracket to this cornice is missing. The right-hand gable of the front block is similar to the left, except that the brackets of the cornice over the window are intact.

The rear of the front block, at the left-hand wall of the rear return, has the same slated roof, a short blank wall, and eaves with moulded cast iron gutter and downpipe matching the entrance front.

EXTERIOR — REAR RETURN

The left-hand wall of the rear return is smooth rendered, lined and blocked, with three window openings at both ground floor and basement level, and one window at first floor in a gabled dormer. The roof is slated as before with dark-toned ridge tiles. A PVC gutter and downpipe serve the right-hand extremity; a cast iron gutter serves the left. The basement windows are rectangular timber sliding sashes, eight-over-four, without horns — modern replacements to the original pattern — with projecting stone cills. The ground floor windows are original sliding sashes, eight-over-eight, with horns; the central opening is blind. The first-floor dormer window is semi-circular arched, three-over-six, with radial tracery lights and horns.

There is a large basement well with coved outer corners to a rubble stone retaining wall, whitened, with a large Tardree granite coping. A rectangular gateway leads to the rear yard and contains a modern scrolling iron gate; the area within is covered with grass.

The rear elevation of the return is three storeys in double-pile form, with twin gables each carrying a chimney at the apex. Walls are smooth rendered, lined and blocked; the chimneys have moulded projecting cornices and retain two original pots each. The inner verges have projecting copings which appear to be concrete; the outer verges are flush. A cast iron soil pipe and a PVC downpipe from a cast iron hopper also serve this elevation. A rectangular water tank sits in the valley between the two roofs. There are two windows at first floor, one in each gable — rectangular timber sashes eight-over-four with horns — one narrow rectangular timber sash six-over-six without horns at ground floor level, and one basement-level sash eight-over-four without horns (a modern replacement to the original pattern), with iron bars affixed. Two doors at basement level are rectangular timber six-panel with the top panel glazed, replacements for original glazed and panelled doors of a different pattern. Projecting forward at each extremity of the rear elevation are roughly coursed basalt rubble screen walls, each containing a gateway leading to the basement wells or open basement areas at the sides of the return.

The right-hand wall of the rear return has similar walling and roof to the left-hand side, except that the window arrangement differs, with two windows in the first bay to the left at intermediate levels to accommodate half-landings of the stairway. All windows are sashed: eight-over-four at basement level; six-over-six and eight-over-eight at ground floor; and six-over-six with radial tracery lights in the first-floor dormer, all without horns. The left-hand basement window has iron bars affixed. The basement windows and the right-hand ground-floor window are all new replacements to the original pattern. The dormer has had new cement repairs to the left-hand kneeler or bracket, though not accurately to the original shape. A PVC soil pipe is fixed at basement level. There is a large basement well to the left-hand side of the rear return, similar in construction to the other, with a paved concrete slab floor and a similar gateway to the rear yard.

SETTING AND APPROACH

The building stands in a rural area on a corner site between two roads, set well back from either road frontage behind mature trees, shrubs and hedges. It is approached through a main entrance gateway comprising a pair of octagonal cast iron posts with a pair of original looped iron gates, flanked on each side by short curving screens of looped ironwork railings on low rendered plinth walls. The driveway is tarmac, ending in a tarmac area in front of the house and continuing to a rear gateway on a shared driveway. The grounds are laid out with lawns surrounded at the rear by mature trees.

REAR YARD AND OUTBUILDING

The rear yard is gravelled, with a partly concreted and partly gravelled raised terrace running across the rear of the house, reached by four steps. The screen walls projecting from the rear elevation of the rear return extend to form the boundaries of the yard, with rubble copings. A gateway facing south-west in one of these walls has square brick piers, whitened, with flat sandstone caps, hung with a pair of double gates in modern ironwork of appropriate design.

The rear boundary of the yard is occupied by a gabled outbuilding containing a garage and stores. The wall facing into the yard is rendered with wet dash; there is a cast iron gutter and downpipe; the roof is slated as for the main house. Openings comprise one rectangular timber sliding sash window six-over-six with horns, one sheeted timber half-door, one modern preformed steel garage door, and one rectangular opening without a door. The outer face of the boundary wall to the rear yard, to the left of the yard gateway, is of rubble masonry whitened; the adjoining gable of the yard outbuilding is rendered with a wet dash, whitened, with a circular opening in the apex. The rear wall of the outbuilding is of roughly coursed basalt rubble. The outer face of the boundary wall to the north-west side of the rear yard and the adjoining gable of the outbuilding are of basalt rubble.