Whitefield College of the Bible, 117 Banbridge Road, Gilford, Co Down, BT63 6DL

Whitefield College of the Bible, formerly Lawrencetown House

This is a detached former country house, rendered and set on an elevated site within landscaped grounds on the south side of Banbridge Road. A house has stood on this site since at least 1777, when it appeared on Taylor and Skinner's Map of the Roads of Ireland. The present building, however, was thoroughly remodelled around 1875, though it retains an earlier core. It is L-shaped on plan, three bays wide and two storeys tall, with a multi-bay two-storey return wing added around 1910. The building is accessed via a long gravel avenue, with a range of two-storey rubblestone outbuildings to the north and a walled garden to the northeast. Since 1981 it has been operated as a religious educational institution — Whitefield College of the Bible, run by the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster — while the grounds have been maintained as parkland.

Architecture and Exterior

The roofs are hipped and covered in natural slate with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles and rolled lead hips. There are five decorative rendered chimneystacks with profiled mouldings and octagonal clay pots. Rainwater is collected by moulded cast-iron guttering supported on a moulded eaves course, with round cast-iron downpipes fitted with decorative iron brackets.

The external walls are finished in ruled-and-lined render — that is, render marked out to resemble coursed stonework — with a projecting smooth rendered plinth at the base and a continuous rendered sill course at each floor level. Window openings are square-headed with masonry sills and 1-over-1 timber sliding sash windows throughout.

The front (northwest) entrance elevation is three bays wide. At its centre is a single-storey entrance porch, flanked to the left by a canted bay window; both the porch and bay window have deep moulded cornices and parapet walls. To the right of the porch is a single window. At first-floor level, three slender window openings sit above the canted bay on the left, with one window each over the centre and right bays. The entrance porch has a pair of slender round-arched window openings to its front face, sharing a single moulded sill. The left cheek of the porch is blank. The right cheek has a square-headed doorway with a moulded architrave surround and keystone. The original timber door survives, with two flat panels and bolection mouldings, fitted with Art Nouveau brass door furniture. The door opens onto a terracotta tiled step leading to the front gravel area.

The northeast elevation is abutted by the hip-roofed two-storey wing added around 1910, which has slightly lower eaves than the main house but is detailed to match it. The northeast face of this wing has a blank wall to the left and a mono-pitched extension to the right. The right cheek has seven windows to each floor, with the first-floor windows positioned directly above those below, the rightmost two being more closely spaced. The left cheek has a central window to each floor, a further window to the right at each floor, and a fully glazed timber door to the left; this elevation is partially abutted to the left by the further two-storey block added in the re-entrant angle. To the southern re-entrant angle formed by the L-plan is a further hip-roofed two-storey block, also detailed to match the main house and with slightly lower eaves.

The southeast elevation has a two-storey hip-roofed return left of centre. The left bay was not viewed during inspection. The right bay is fully abutted by the two-storey block. The two-storey return has a central wall-headed chimney, two windows to the right of the ground floor, and windows to the far left and far right at first-floor level. The left cheek of this return has fully glazed timber double doors with a square-headed overlight above, and a window over to the left; to the right of these doors is a single-storey canted bay with three slender window openings above. The right cheek has a wall-headed chimney, a central first-floor window, and is abutted to the left by the two-storey block. That two-storey block has a square-headed timber panelled and glazed door to the left, with windows to the centre and right at ground floor, and three windows to the first floor with one blocked-up window to the right; the right cheek has a single first-floor window.

The southwest garden elevation features a single-storey canted bay with three slender windows above.

Setting and Outbuildings

The house sits on an elevated landscaped site at a meander of the River Bann. The site is enclosed to the road by rubblestone walling with stacked coping, with a pair of replacement steel gates hung on granite ashlar piers with decorative stone capstones.

To the north, a gravel yard is enclosed to the west by a two-storey rubblestone outbuilding with a half-hipped natural slate roof, cast-iron guttering to a redbrick eaves course, square-headed openings with brick relieving arches, granite sills, and early sheeted timber doors and shutters. Abutting the front elevation is a further single-storey rubblestone structure with a hipped natural slate roof and sheeted timber doors.

To the northeast is an enclosed walled garden with tall redbrick walls and a pair of wrought-iron gates on redbrick piers. Within the walled garden stands a detached corrugated iron mission hall, relocated here from Sixmilecross, County Tyrone in 1983. This is the hall in which the Reverend Dr Ian Paisley preached his first sermon.

Historical Background

The estate was originally the property of a Colonel Laurence, who came into possession during the Cromwellian period through his wife, Agnes Barrett. Colonel Laurence granted a lease to Francis Hall, who built a mill the following year — known thereafter as Hall's Mill. Laurence had no male heir, and his estate passed to Thomas Dawson, who added the name Laurence to his own in acknowledgement of his inheritance through his mother. Thomas Dawson Laurence, born in 1730, was both an army veteran and a published poet. His Miscellaneous Works appeared in eight volumes in 1806, and his poem Epitaph on an orphan beggar child has been included in a modern collection of eighteenth-century Irish verse edited by Andrew Carpenter.

In 1796 Laurence sold the Lawrencetown estate to Ross Thompson, later of Greenwood Park in Newry, for £35,000. Thompson lived at Lawrencetown House from 1797 until around 1810. In 1811 Alexander Stewart of Ards House, Donegal — a brother of the 1st Marquess of Londonderry — attempted to purchase the estate, but negotiations stalled as it was valued at more than £100,000. By the 1820s, however, the house had come into Stewart's ownership. A contemporary description quoted by Logan describes the house as "very commodious, and washed by the River Bann — the offices slated and finished in a superb manner. There are six acres of fine orchard, the gardens extensive and highly ornamental, in one of which there is a fountain that hath a sulphurous water. The estate is well wooded and does not contain one unprofitable acre, the most of it being rich meadow."

Stewart's land agent, Captain George Bowen, was the main resident for several years, though Stewart himself was occasionally present. The Townland Valuation of 1827 to 1840 lists the occupier as Captain Bowen and values the house and offices at £42 16 shillings, recording dimensions for the main house, several wings, and rear projections. Outbuildings at that time included a laundry and dairy, servants' room, scullery, harness room, coach house, stables, cow houses, car and cart houses, poultry house, gardener's house, and gate houses. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864 records George E. Bowen — by then a magistrate — still in residence, leasing the house, offices, gate house and over 34 acres from A.R. Stewart. The buildings were valued at £55, with the valuer commenting that the house was a "neat concern, house stone finished but not commodious, small rooms."

George E. Bowen became a prominent local figure and was serving as a Justice of the Peace at the time of his resignation as land agent around 1865. The following year, in 1866, the entire contents of the house were sold at auction, as advertised in the Belfast Newsletter. The auction included fashionable furniture such as mahogany parlour and drawing room chairs, easy chairs, sofas, loungers, a sideboard, cabinets, chiffoniers, and dining, loo, card, writing and other tables; superb Brussels, Kidderminster and other carpets and rugs; window hangings in damask and moreen; and four-post mahogany, Albert, French and other bedsteads. Outside effects included a very elegant Clarence carriage "just out of Bathurst's factory, and quite as good as new," horses, cows, agricultural equipment, and even a two-oared boat.

In 1867 the house, garden and walled-in demesne were advertised to let. The accommodation at that time comprised a drawing room, dining room, breakfast parlour, four large and three smaller bedrooms, and an excellent kitchen, pantry and offices, with large and convenient outbuildings and stables. The two-acre walled garden contained fruit trees in full bearing and an excellent range of vineries. For a period the house was occupied by Edward Murphy, and the valuation was increased to £75 around 1875, suggesting improvements at that time.

In 1877 the house was purchased by Henry Albert Uprichard, whose family had become owners of the Springvale bleach works in the 1830s, connecting the house directly to the linen industry of the district. Henry Albert Uprichard moved to the house on his marriage to Emily Green, daughter of Forster Green, the wealthy Belfast tea and coffee merchant. The couple remained until 1884, when they moved to Elmfield Castle. The house was again advertised to let in 1892, and subsequent valuation records list James Wilson as tenant in 1892 and James Law in 1896. The 1901 census records Law as a 27-year-old farmer living in the 15-room house with a general domestic servant aged 65 from County Monaghan.

William Forster Uprichard lived in the house in 1912 and Forster Green Uprichard in 1913. Captain Forster Green Uprichard subsequently "rebuilt" the house, as recorded in valuation notes which document the removal of one portion and the addition of a new portion. The plan form of the building was, however, little altered as shown on subsequent Ordnance Survey map editions — with the exception of the removal of one of the two rear returns — and it is likely that much of the earlier fabric was retained. Valuation notes of this period also record that all the office housing was very old and in poor condition and that the greenhouses were in ruins. The overall valuation of buildings on the site was reduced to £60, as the gate lodges and a motorman's house were separated off and valued independently.

The First General Revaluation of 1933 to 1934 recorded the accommodation in detail. On the ground floor were an L-shaped hall and porch, a dining room with bay, a parlour, a morning room, a cloakroom with washbasin and separate WC; and in the service wing, a kitchen, scullery, two pantries, a servants' hall, larder, and outside washhouse. Upstairs was a square landing, one principal bedroom with its own bath, lavatory and WC, two visitors' bedrooms, a dressing room, and visitors' bath with washbasin and WC. The wing contained three servants' bedrooms, a housemaid's pantry, servants' bath and separate WC, a linen cupboard, and a boot room. Electric light was supplied from works and water from a pump and well. The valuer noted that the house had been modernised and that there was a very extensive park attached. The associated plan shows the house with porch, bay windows and service wing, together with a series of single and two-storey outbuildings including a coalhouse, stables, stores, a garage, byre, and fowl house.

The Uprichards remained at the house until Captain Forster Green Uprichard's death in 1945, when the property passed to another linen family, the Fergusons. James Dickson Ferguson OBE DL took up residence shortly after returning from service as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Second World War. Ferguson had inherited Edenderry House in Banbridge from his uncle but sold it in 1947 to Banbridge Academy, moving to Lawrencetown House while restoring Aghaderg Glebe House, where he later lived until his death in 1979.

The house has been in use as Whitefield College of the Bible since 1981, operated by the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster to train candidates for ministry.