Solitude, Castlewellan Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 4AX

Solitude is a substantial Victorian house built in 1863–64, standing two storeys over a basement with an attic storey, arranged in three bays on a square plan with rear abutments. It sits on an island in the River Bann created by the cutting of a mill-race, and is reached from the Castlewellan Road along a long, straight driveway running parallel to adjacent former mill buildings. The house is in private ownership and retains much of its original style, proportions and character, with relatively little alteration to its appearance or fabric. The listing covers both the house and its gate screen.

The hipped roof is covered in natural slate with clay hip and ridge tiles. The chimney stacks are smoothly rendered with a moulded cornice. A pitched roof dormer with timber barge boards and a timber finial sits centrally on the roof pitch. Rainwater goods are cast-iron with an ogee moulded profile.

The external walls are finished in ruled-and-lined painted render with rusticated long-and-short quoins at the corners. The windows are 2/2 segmental-arched timber sliding sashes with vertical glazing bars and painted masonry cills. The front door is a four-panel raised-and-pointed timber door with brass ironmongery, set within a moulded timber surround and a segmental-arched opening. It is flanked by leaded coloured over-lights and side lights with aprons, and is reached by masonry steps with a perron spanning the basement trench, finished with a solid masonry balustrade terminating in robust plain piers. Modern wall-mounted lamps flank the door opening.

The principal (north) elevation faces the long driveway and is symmetrically arranged. The front door sits centrally, flanked by a single window to each side at ground floor level. Three slightly diminished windows at first floor are positioned directly above the ground floor openings, with further diminished windows at basement level in the outer bays. A full-width basement trench runs across the façade, surmounted by replacement railings. The dormer window is centrally placed on the roof slope above.

The left (east) elevation is asymmetrically arranged. To the left bay, a two-storey canted bay projection features a central door at basement level flanked by narrow windows to the side cheeks, with ground floor windows above. The right bay has two basement windows including a narrow left window, a single ground floor window that has been replaced in uPVC, and two blank windows at first floor level.

The rear (south) elevation is also asymmetrically arranged. The right bay has single windows at all floor levels. A hipped shallow return left of centre features windows of varying sizes, and there is a single first floor window to the left bay. At basement level on the left bay there is a single-storey lean-to abutment, the left cheek of which is further abutted by a single-storey pitched roof outbuilding.

The right (west) elevation is asymmetrically arranged, with two enlarged uPVC replacement windows at basement level. Three uniformly arranged windows appear at ground floor level, with blank windows directly above at first floor.

The gate screen at the entrance to the driveway comprises cement rendered piers with masonry caps, and replacement railings and gates. The driveway is lined with lawns on either side, with a further large lawn addressing the principal north elevation. A small modern garage lies to the east of the house and further garages are located to the rear. The River Bann forms the eastern boundary of the site. To the south is a rubble masonry wall with a two-storey red-brick terrace beyond. To the north stands a three-storey rubble masonry former mill building with its associated mill-race.

Despite claims in secondary sources that the house dates from around 1840, and a suggestion by both Rankin and Brett that it was built for the Clibborn family, all primary evidence points firmly to a construction date of 1863–64. The house does not appear on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860, is shown as a newly completed building on a town plan of Banbridge dating from around 1864, and Griffith's Valuation records it as still unfinished around 1863. The Annual Revisions first valued the house in 1864 at £35.

The house was built for Samuel Hill, who held the land from the Marquis of Downshire. Hill had been made a partner of the local linen firm Clibborn & Co. in the early 1850s, after which the company traded as Clibborn, Hill & Co. The Clibborn family were Quakers who had operated a factory, bleach green and flour mill in Banbridge on the southern side of the River Bann from at least 1767. In 1852 the firm won first prize for producing diapers at London's Great Exhibition. A new warehouse was constructed on the Castlewellan Road to the north of Solitude House in the 1850s. It was Samuel Hill, described as a Gentleman in his will, who constructed Solitude House on the island formed by the mill-race cut to supply water to the Clibborn Bleachworks to the south. The house gave its name to the site in the Ulster Street Directories.

Hill resided at Solitude until his death on 31 December 1891, leaving the property and effects valued at £452 16s. 5d. to his wife Katherine. The value of the site had been reduced to £32 in 1884 for unknown reasons. Katherine Hill, recorded in the 1901 Census as aged 45 and Church of Ireland, continued to live at Solitude with her daughter Ethel, aged 12, and had three other children from her marriage. By that time the property was classified as a first-class dwelling and possessed an extensive range of outbuildings on the island to the rear, including two stables, a cow house, a piggery, a boiling house, a barn and two stores. By the 1911 Census a laundry house had been added to this list. Katherine Hill vacated the house by 1919, when a Miss Mary Burnett came into possession and remained there until at least 1930, when the Annual Revisions cease.

The island setting of the house was historically served by a road bridge on its east side and a footbridge on its west leading to Bridge Street; the footbridge was washed away during flooding of the River Bann in 1972. The mill-race has since been filled in and incorporated into a public park walk. The outbuildings recorded in the census returns have been replaced by modern garages. Solitude House was listed in 1977.