30 Bluestone Road, Crossmacahilly, Portadown, Craigavon, Co Armagh, BT63 5SR

30 Bluestone Road, Crossmacahilly, Portadown

A four-bay semi-detached thatched house, now largely isolated as its neighbour has largely disappeared. The building is Grade B1 listed and faces south onto Bluestone Road, set back approximately six metres behind a garden bounded by a whitewashed wall and hedge. A wrought iron gate opposite the entrance is flanked by square posts with pyramidal caps. Round 'Ulster' piers flank a wrought iron gate to the farmyard at the eastern end.

The walls are smooth rendered and painted white, formerly whitewashed. The roof is thatched in scallop style using combed wheat reed, recently fitted with a flush head and fixed with an X-shaped pattern of liggers. A small hip (ridge peak) at the eastern end drops to form a protective verge over the gable wall, with a similar peak formed at the other end where the thatch meets the tin roof of the neighbouring shed. Eaves and verges are protected by wire mesh, with eaves cut back parallel to the ground and verges cut parallel to the roof. Wet dashed chimneys are parged in cement at their junction with the thatch. Two chimneys rise from the ridge, one aligning with the entrance door and the other over the eastern structural bay.

A small rectangular porch with a flat roof projects from the centre of the house front. It is pebble dashed with sand and cement corners and cornice, now painted white like the rest of the building. Windows on the front elevation are painted white, sashed, without horns, and with exposed boxes. Their distribution and size are irregular: to the east of the entrance, two windows light an interior room and a single window lights the eastern bay; to the right of the entrance, a smaller high-placed window lights the kitchen, while two further windows light the larger western structural bay.

To the west, a small tin-roofed barn abuts the house, owned separately and all that remains of a second similar house. Its mud walls are exposed and weathering. The rear elevation features a small concrete-topped yard approximately three metres deep, surrounded by a waist-high concrete block retaining wall. A flat-roofed kitchen extension projects from the centre, with two small windows (one sash, one casement) to the interior on the west side, a large casement serving the new kitchen, and a horizontal-proportion casement on the east side that maintains the character of the house and serves the former kitchen. The eastern elevation wall is rendered in fine wet dash and sits forward approximately 150mm, exposing only 150mm of thatch thickness rather than the standard 300mm. A sash window serves the bay near the gable, while the end gable is blank.

A two-storey red brick barn stands perpendicular to the house, aligned two metres to the rear with the gable. Constructed of hand-made bricks laid in English Garden Wall bond with a natural slate roof (which is sagging), it features two flat arches for farm machinery and complements the setting of the house.