Eden Hill 35 Upper Quilly Road Banbridge Co Down BT25 1NP

Eden Hill is a detached, asymmetrical farmhouse of the developed vernacular lobby-entry house type, built around 1800, standing two storeys high across five bays. It sits at the end of a long tree-lined avenue on a slightly elevated mature site to the east of Upper Quilly Road, facing northwest. Although the house has been enlarged and externally refurbished at various points, a substantial amount of original Georgian fabric survives, including much of the internal layout and detailing. Later additions include a single-storey flat-roofed front entrance porch added around 1930, a two-bay two-storey flat-roofed rear extension added around 1960, and a single-storey wing abutting the southwest gable. The building is rectangular on plan.

The roof is covered in natural slate with black clay ridge tiles, raised concrete verges, and three rendered profiled brick chimneystacks. Moulded metal guttering is carried on a moulded rendered eaves cornice, with plastic downpipes. The walls are cement rendered with rusticated rendered quoins; the ground floor is ruled-and-lined below a continuous sill band, while the first floor is finished in pebbledash render. Window openings are square-headed with concrete sills and original 6/6 timber sash windows with exposed sash boxes. On the front elevation, the five-bay arrangement is centred on the single-storey flat-roofed entrance porch. The first-floor windows are diminished in size and have smooth rendered surrounds, while the larger ground-floor windows have deep moulded architrave surrounds. The entrance porch has a single-pane timber sash window to the front with margin lights, and a square-headed opening to the right cheek fitted with a replacement hardwood panelled door.

The northeast gable is blank apart from a chimney at the apex, and the date '1928' is scribed into the pebbledash render at first-floor level. The rear elevation is partly obscured by the off-centre flat-roofed two-storey extension added around 1960. At first-floor level to the right are two 2/2 timber sash windows; the remaining openings are largely fitted with timber casement or uPVC replacement windows. A replacement sheeted timber door opens onto a rear concrete-paved yard. The southwest gable is abutted by a single-bay single-storey rendered section with a pitched natural slate roof and a steel casement window. This is further abutted by a single-storey section with a single-span natural slate roof, attached to a single-storey outbuilding set at a right angle, which encloses the southwest side of the yard.

The house stands within an extensive front garden enclosed by hedging. The principal entrance is formed by a pair of decorative wrought-iron gates supported on rendered piers with quadrant walls featuring stop-chamfer details and gabled capstones. A matching pedestrian wrought-iron gate and piers is positioned to the southeast of the house. The yard to the rear is enclosed on the northeast by a two-storey rough-cast rendered outbuilding with a pitched natural slate roof, sheeted timber doors, and loading bays. The southeast is enclosed by a further two-storey range with a corrugated iron roof, cement rendered walls, and sheeted timber doors and loading bays. A single-storey lime-rendered stone outbuilding with a pitched natural slate roof that formerly enclosed the southwest of the yard has been demolished, around 2015.

The farmhouse is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 as a rectangular structure at the end of a tree-lined drive, with a long range of outbuildings to the west that may have partially survived to the present day. The Townland Valuation of 1828 to 1840 records the occupants and gives dimensions for a two-storey house with a return — map evidence suggests this was aligned with the main house — along with a long narrow single-storey outbuilding. The proportions and surviving internal fabric support a late 18th-century date of construction. By the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860, further outbuildings had been added to the site, forming a stable courtyard to the rear.

Although the house appears on the Ordnance Survey map as 'Rose Mount', the contemporary Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864 records the name as 'Eden Hill', which it has retained throughout subsequent valuation records. At the time of Griffith's Valuation, the occupiers were Church of Ireland ministers. The house was valued at £15 and set in a small plot of two acres. The valuer's notes describe the dwelling as 'respectable and very well finished' and suggest the house had recently undergone some remodelling; the dimensions given are consistent with the single-storey return having been raised since the earlier Townland Valuation. In the mid-1860s the house was leased from the Earl of Clanwilliam, and the house and outbuildings were by then part of a farm of over 53 acres. In 1892 the farm passed to its present owners, but the following year the valuation of the buildings was reduced to £7 10s on account of the house being in 'very bad repair'. The 1901 census records it as a second-class house with six rooms; by 1911 it had been extended to eight rooms and was reclassified as first class. The fourth edition Ordnance Survey map of 1903 to 1918 shows that the farmhouse had been extended to the west, with this addition built across the line of the former driveway, which was consequently relocated slightly further west.

The First General Revaluation of 1933 to 1934 valued the house at £9 5s, with £2 10s for agricultural buildings. The 'farmhouse in fair condition' at that time comprised four bedrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen, pantry, and scullery. The accompanying plan and dimensions describe a house of one-and-a-half storeys with a single-storey porch to the front and a single-storey return to the rear. A motor house of corrugated iron is also listed, though the remaining outbuildings are not individually enumerated in the valuer's notes.

Eden Hill is a good example of this type of substantial farmhouse associated with the local church, surviving in developed form with a good range of outbuildings and retaining its original mature setting.