’The Hill Farm’, 57 Portaferry Road, Tullytramon, Cloghy, Newtownards, Co. Down, BT22 1HP

The Hill Farm is a plain, recently renovated one-and-a-half-storey vernacular farmhouse likely dating from before 1834. It sits on a hilltop less than a mile west of the village of Cloghy.

The front, south-east facing facade features an off-centre timber panelled door with two modern two-pane timber windows to the left of the door, and one to the right. Two similar upper-level windows are visible in the north-east gable, with one ground-floor window to the right, mirrored in a similar arrangement on the south-west gable. The rear elevation has an off-centre timber and glazed back door with a window to the left and two to the right, smaller than those on the front. The entire house is finished with a limestone chip render, complemented by simple, smooth cement surrounds to the doors and windows and edges of some walls, with smooth cement detailing at the base. The roof is gabled and pitched, covered with concrete pan tiles, stone parapets and four yellow brick chimney stacks with dentilled corbelling. A Velux window is positioned to the right of centre at the rear. The building incorporates PVC ogee gutters and square downspouts. A tall rendered wall encloses a corrugated iron shed to the right at the rear.

A building is depicted on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1834, appearing largely unchanged from the present day, suggesting a construction date of at least the early nineteenth century. Historical records, including primary sources like Ordnance Survey Maps from 1834 and valuation records from 1835 and 1863 held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI), and Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland (1991), corroborate this timeline.