23 Rock Meeting Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT35 6QR

Rockmount (formerly known as The Rocks) is a detached, symmetrical, three-bay, two-storey rendered farmhouse built around 1850, set on an elevated site to the west of Rock Meeting Road, Banbridge. It is a good, increasingly rare, surviving example of a mid-Victorian farmhouse of this type in the area, retaining most of its original detailing and character. The listing covers the house, outbuildings, boundary walls, and gates.

EXTERIOR

The house is T-shaped on plan, facing east, with a gabled two-storey rear return. It is accessed via a long gravel drive. The roof is pitched natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, two replacement brown brick chimneystacks, and cast-iron rainwater goods supported on iron drive-through brackets. The external walls are finished in ruled-and-lined cement render.

Window openings are square-headed throughout, fitted with multi-pane timber sash windows on granite cills, unless noted otherwise below.

The front east elevation is three windows wide with a central elliptical-arched entrance. The doorcase is tripartite, comprising a four-panelled timber door, fixed-pane sidelights over an apron, and a tripartite overlight. The door opens onto a granite platform with a single granite step.

The gabled south elevation has one window to the right at each floor. To its left is a single-storey lean-to with a natural slate roof, containing a tripartite metal window; the right cheek is blank and the left cheek has a square-headed timber sheeted door.

The rear west elevation has a central round-arched stairwell window at landing level and a window to each floor on the right. To the left, a gabled two-storey rendered return with a natural slate roof has multi-pane casement windows and a redbrick chimneystack positioned off the ridge on the north slope. The return has a central window to the ground floor and two windows to the first floor at the gable. The right cheek was not viewed. The left cheek has a full-width catslide roof with a recessed open entrance porch accessed through a segmental-arched opening to the right; the catslide extends further to the left with a window to the north and blank cheeks.

The gabled north elevation has two windows to each floor, with the window at the top right being a mock sliding sash casement.

SETTING

The house stands at the end of a long gravel avenue with slender square granite gate piers having chamfered corners and projecting pyramidal caps (no gates currently hung). The front garden is enclosed by low redbrick walls with tooled masonry coping, cast-iron railings, and decorative cast-iron gates supported on decorative cast-iron posts.

To the rear is a rectangular yard enclosed on the south by a multi-bay two-storey rubblestone outbuilding with a pitched natural slate roof, redbrick-lined openings with timber sheeted doors, and a single flight of external stone steps. To the north is a lime-rendered rubblestone multi-bay two-storey outbuilding with a pitched natural slate roof, cast-iron wall-ties, steel casement windows, and timber sheeted doors. To the west is a small single-storey rubblestone two-bay pigsty with a natural slate roof, abutted by later concrete structures.

HISTORY

Buildings are recorded on this site on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, and historical evidence suggests that at least one of the surviving outbuildings predates the present house. The current house does not appear until the second edition OS map of 1860, which also shows the farm as it is presently laid out: the main house with rear return, outbuildings to the north and south of the yard, and a smaller shed and pigsty to the west. At this date the farm was captioned The Rocks. The two outbuildings shown to the south of the yard were subsequently merged into a single long range.

In the Townland Valuation of 1828 to 1840, the site cannot be securely identified, but a farm then occupied by Joseph Carswell was recorded, valued at £3 14s, comprising a single-storey thatched house and two single-storey thatched outbuildings, with dimensions given. By the time of Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864, the present two-storey house with return had been built and was valued at £13. The valuer noted it was "very neat." Dimensions were also recorded for two-storey and single-storey outbuildings including a single-storey former farmhouse and cowshed to the north of the farmyard. The occupier was Samuel Carswell, farming over 41 acres held from the Earl of Clanwilliam.

By 1879 the valuation had risen to £14 10s, with the outbuildings recorded as "enlarged." Map evidence suggests the outbuilding to the south of the yard was remodelled or extended at this time. Samuel Carswell became owner in fee of the farm under land purchase legislation in 1896 but died in 1897, leaving the property to his son Joseph. In his will, Samuel instructed that Joseph pay his widow fifty pounds sterling yearly and that she be "maintained, supported and clothed" by Joseph "during the term of her natural life" at the farmhouse, with the alternative provision that if she chose to leave she should receive £500, a bed, bedding, and a sewing machine.

The 1901 census incorrectly records Joseph Carswell as living in Ballymacaratty More. The house was then described as second class with eight rooms and ten outbuildings. Joseph lived there with his mother Sarah and sister Mary, in keeping with his father's wishes, and the household included a seventeen-year-old domestic servant from County Leitrim. By the 1911 census, the family were correctly listed in Carrickdrumman townland; the house had grown to eleven rooms and had attained a first-class designation.

The property remained with the Carswell family until 1940, when it passed to George Bryson. At the time of transfer, the ground floor comprised two reception rooms, two small rooms, a kitchen, a scullery, and an outside pantry. The first floor had four bedrooms, with two further bedrooms over the kitchen. The house let for £18 per annum in 1935. A plan from this period shows the dwelling with an attached poultry house and a return with projecting scullery. The north outbuilding to the rear served as a byre and barn with a further byre and cattle shed adjoining; the south outbuilding comprised a trap house, potato house, byre, and cart shed with lofts over. Pigsties to the west are shown and remain on site.

The dwelling house is currently vacant.