Glenville, 101 Lurgan Road, Glenavy, Crumlin, Co Antrim, BT29 4QF

Glenville is a relatively rare example of a two-storey gentleman's vernacular residence of the late Georgian period which, despite some recent alterations — most notably the loss of its original sash window frames — remains largely intact throughout.

The house is two storeys, three bays, built of rubble blackstone with a slated gabled roof. The main entrance front faces east and is symmetrically arranged, with a later gabled porch positioned centrally. The main roof is covered in Bangor blue slates laid in regular courses with dark blue ridge tiles. Two chimneys are symmetrically placed, constructed of red brick with a projecting brick course and fitted with modern pots. The walls are of rubble blackstone and boulders laid in lime mortar with galleting, finished with a red brick eaves course. A PVC gutter and downpipe serve the left-hand end of the elevation. The ground floor window lintels are red brick flat arches with smooth cement render to the underside. There are three windows at first floor level and two at ground floor, all of which are modern rectangular timber fixed lights with narrow top-hung vents containing modern pseudo-leaded glazing, set on deep projecting painted concrete cills.

The entrance porch is gabled with a slated roof and brown ridge tiles, rising to abut the first floor cill, with PVC gutters and downpipes to each side. The timber barge boards to the front of the porch are in poor condition. The porch walls are of painted concrete blockwork. The front gable of the porch contains a rectangular timber sliding sash window, vertically hung, three-over-one with horns, which is original, set on a concrete cill. The doorway is in the north side of the porch and consists of a rectangular timber ledged door containing a panel of lozenge-pattern glazing bars, fitted with an early to mid-20th century bakelite doorknob and a modern metal letterbox. The window in the south side of the porch is a rectangular timber fixed light of three panes. The south gable of the house is a blank wall finished with a dry dash of crushed black stones, with a flush verge to the roof.

The rear elevation is three windows wide at first floor level. The roof is slated as described above and includes one modern rooflight. A PVC gutter and downpipe serve the right-hand end, and a PVC soil pipe is positioned near the centre. The walling matches the entrance front. The three first floor windows are rectangular timber fixed lights with top-hung vents as on the entrance front, with projecting concrete cills to the outer windows, a smeared cement reveal to the central window, and red brick side reveals to the left-hand window. At ground floor level there are three rectangular modern windows. The left-hand window is smaller than its opening, which is partly filled in at the bottom with timber boarding, set on a cill of poor quality, with modern brickwork used to block part of the wall opening below the cill. The next window to the right is set within a modern brick doorway with a rotting wooden lintel, a concrete cill, and crudely cemented rubble stonework filling the opening below the cill. The central ground floor window has a shallow concrete cill with cement render to the walling below. The doorway to the right-hand side of the rear elevation is now enclosed by a modern timber conservatory; the original doorway has a cement-dressed opening with a brick flat arch above and a modern glazed door of twelve panes. Attached to the left-hand end of the rear elevation is a single-storey gabled outbuilding of rubble stonework with a corrugated perspex roof, returning to the west; this is of overall poor quality.

The north gable is of rubble stonework as described, with flush verges and one rectangular timber window matching those on the entrance front, set in a flat brick arch with a projecting concrete cill. Returning to the north is a lean-to side porch of rubble stonework containing a rectangular timber door with herringbone-pattern glazing set in brick jambs; two small rectangular windows with pseudo-leaded glazing, recessed cement cills, and wooden heads sit to the right of this doorway. The lean-to roof is of Bangor blue slates in regular courses with PVC rainwater goods. The roughly rendered top of an outbuilding gable is visible above the lean-to roof.

The house stands at the end of a long lane in a very rural area, with outbuildings of poor quality attached and detached on the north side. There is a hard-surfaced area to the front and a grassy garden to the rear.

Although a smaller structure appears on this site on the Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33, the valuation of January 1835 describes a house of similar dimensions to the present building. This, combined with the absence of any subsequently documented major changes, indicates that the building as it stands today pre-dates 1832. The 1835 valuation records the house as a "not new" building measuring 44 feet by 22½ feet by 15 feet to the eaves, with a slate roof, and lists a range of attendant outbuildings to the north and west: one measuring 96 by 18 by 8½ feet (thatched), another 13½ by 20 by 9½ feet, another 26 by 14 by 7 feet, a thatched piggery of 12 by 8 by 6 feet, and a thatched shed of 13 by 14½ by 8 feet. Also recorded is a separate small thatched dwelling of 41½ by 21½ by 8 feet with its own outbuilding of 20 by 21½ by 12½ feet. At this date the main house was in the hands of John Higginson, with the smaller dwelling occupied by his mother, Elizabeth. A notice in the Belfast News-Letter of March 1835 refers to John as being "of Glenville," confirming that the property already bore its current name at that date, although it is not captioned as such on the 1832–33 map. The house may well be the "Glen-ville" near Glenavy recorded in Ambrose Leet's 1814 Directory and in Atkinson's 1823 Ireland Exhibited to England as the residence of a William Whitlaw. In the second valuation of around 1859, Robert Higginson is named as the occupant, holding a lease from the Hertford estate. The smaller house is not mentioned in this valuation, and no other details are recorded, though a pencil annotation reads "old, 40 or 50 age," suggesting the valuers believed the building to date from around the 1810s — a date consistent with the internal detailing. The revised Ordnance Survey map of 1858 shows that further outbuildings had been added to the northwest by this stage, and that the long outbuilding immediately to the west of the house had been extended to connect with a small block to the far west that had appeared as a separate structure on the earlier map; this latter structure may represent the secondary dwelling recorded in 1835. Apart from the porch, which map evidence shows was added sometime between 1901 and 1920, the post-1864 valuations record no other alterations to the house, and the rateable value remained constant at £7 per annum from that date until at least 1930. The freehold was acquired by the Higginson family from the Wallace estate around 1906, and the family appears to have remained there until 1944, when Mr Victor Higginson put the property up for sale. The sale notice in the Belfast News-Letter describes the house as "a good slated dwelling house containing 2 reception rooms, 5 bedrooms, boxroom, kitchen, pantry, scullery and storeroom." The subsequent sequence of occupation is difficult to trace, but by 1950 Alice Gerda Courage was living here, and in the later 1950s and 1960s it may have been in the hands of a family called Shepherd, though this is not certain. The present owner's family acquired the property prior to 1976, and the house was listed in April 1976. In or shortly before 1983, Glenville and its surrounding farmland, along with other lands in Ballyvollen townland and the nearby townlands of Aghnadarragh and Ballyshanaghill, were acquired by the Department of Economic Development with the intention of mining for lignite. Mining rights are thought to have been subsequently granted to an Australian company, and it was during this period of ownership that the house's original sash windows were replaced with the current modern-style frames. The mining venture in the area was eventually abandoned, around 1995, and Glenville passed back into the hands of its previous owners.