Old Rectory, Diamond Grange, 42 Annagora Road, Portadown, Craigavon, Co Armagh, BT62 4JE

Old Rectory, Diamond Grange

This is a former Victorian rectory, now a private dwelling, built in the 1860s as part of the establishment of Diamond as a perpetual curacy out of Drumcree and Kilmore parishes on 13 July 1867. The building appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1856, though the precise date of construction is not recorded. It was originally appointed for Edward Gabbett, the first perpetual curate, when services were held in the nearby Grange O'Neiland School until St Paul's Church was built beside the school in 1927. The date when the rectory was relinquished by the Church of Ireland and became a private dwelling is not known.

The house is a two-storey gabled structure with its main entrance facing approximately west. The roof is laid in Bangor blue slates in regular courses with plain timber bargeboards, oversailing eaves on chamfered timber struts, and cast iron rainwater goods. Prominent painted stone chimneys feature chamfered stacks and tall battered caps.

The walling is snecked basalt rubble with yellow brick block quoins and similar dressings to windows. Lozenge-shaped dressed stone ventilation holes pierce the apex of the main gables and the plinth, with two similar small window openings to the north elevation. Windows are mainly rectangular timber coupled sliding sash, vertically hung, 2 over 2 with horns, set in slightly cambered flat arches. The north elevation also includes a pair of coupled semi-circular arched windows, sashed in the same manner.

The main entrance contains a rectangular timber tongued and grooved sheeted door of herring-bone pattern with narrow side lights and an arched fanlight set in a segmental-arched brick surround. Projecting in front of the main entrance is an elaborate open-sided timber porch with a steeply pitched lean-to roof supported on stop-chamfered timber posts with similarly chamfered struts. Some of the timber members are modern replacements but reportedly not exactly to the original pattern.

To the rear, connected to the house by a high rubble basalt screen wall, is a two-storey outbuilding of similar style to the main house, with its entrance facing into an enclosed yard between it and the house.

The house stands in a very rural setting, set in its own grounds surrounded by mature trees and reached by a driveway.