Bannvale House, 10 Moyallen Road, Gilford, Craigavon, Co Down, BT63 5JX

Bannvale House, 10 Moyallen Road, Gilford

Bannvale House is a former linen bleacher's residence built around 1810 and remodelled around 1860, situated to the east of Moyallen Road on an extensive site to the north of Gilford. It is one of a series of linen bleachers' houses built along the River Bann between Banbridge and Moyallon during the period when this area rose to become one of the most important inland linen manufacturing areas in Ireland. The house is now used as administrative offices for the Southern Health and Social Care Trust, and its historic fabric and detailing have been compromised by successive changes of use. Nevertheless, significant historic features survive and the building retains strong connections with the local linen industry. It is listed as part of a group that includes two former gate lodges.

Architectural Description

The building is an asymmetrical two-storey, four-bay former house, L-shaped on plan, with a full-height projecting entrance bay and a two-storey extension to the west. The roof is pitched with natural slate, roll-topped ridge tiles, and clipped verges. Simple rendered chimneystacks rise from the cross walls. Half-round cast iron rainwater goods are carried on slightly projecting rendered eaves. The external walls are rendered over a shallow plinth in ruled-and-lined fashion. The entrance bay has slightly advanced straight quoins and, above each window, a platband embellished with widely spaced dentils.

The windows are replacement sliding sashes throughout. Above the entrance a tripartite arrangement is used — 2/2, 6/6, and 2/2 lights — with the same tripartite arrangement flanking the entrance bay. Elsewhere, 6/6 sliding sashes are used as standard, with the exception of the cheeks of the entrance bay, which are lit by 1/1 round-arched sliding sashes. Ground floor windows are set within segmental-arched reveals with hood moulds; first floor windows have label moulds. Painted stone sills are used throughout, except at recent insertions.

The principal elevation faces south-east, with the two-storey entrance bay abutting the main block slightly right of centre. The entrance bay has an opening to each floor on each of its elevations. Two windows sit to either side of the entrance bay, those to the left being more widely spaced; the window at first floor far left was previously a replacement door. The present entrance has a modern door with 2/2 sidelights, stone sills, plinth blocks, and a granite threshold. The ground floor is extended to the left by a single-storey lean-to side porch with a raised verge, lit by a window to the south-east and served by a modern door to the north-west. The south-west gable is blank at the upper level and is abutted at ground floor by both the lean-to and a modern two-storey extension to the left. This extension has two 1/1 windows to each floor of the gable (the first floor windows sitting directly over the ground floor ones), and the various cheeks and faces of the extension are similarly fenestrated with 1/1 windows arranged in vertical pairs. The rear, north-west elevation comprises a two-storey return to the left, partially abutted to the right by a pitched-roofed two-storey extension whose roof runs parallel with the main block. The exposed section of this elevation has two 1/1 timber sliding sash windows to the first floor and two diminutive casement windows to the ground floor left, with a half-glazed door to the right under a modern flat-roofed canopy. The return has a glazed timber-framed door with a modern flat-roofed canopy over it to the left of centre, a 1/1 window to the right, and two 1/1 windows to the first floor sitting directly over the ground floor openings, all set in moulded architraves. The cheeks of the return have 1/1 windows to each floor in vertical pairs (two per floor on the right cheek, three per floor on the left cheek). The north-east gable has a window to the right of centre at each floor, set in moulded architraves, the first floor window sitting directly over the ground floor one.

Setting

The house occupies an institutional setting, surrounded by tarmac parking areas and hardstandings and various modern health services buildings, with lawns beyond. The former walled garden has been largely removed and now serves as a sensory garden; only a portion of the east wall survives, built of rubble stone to its inner face and galletted to its outer face. The site is accessed from Moyallen Road to the east by a long tarmac drive, with one former gate lodge situated opposite the entrance. A second former gate lodge lies to the east but is now separated from the house by the Woodlands housing development.

Historical Background

The house is thought to have been built by James Uprichard in the early years of the 19th century — a lease of 1809 bears his name. In common with many prominent linen families of the Bann Valley, the Uprichards were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and Bannvale remained in the family for more than a hundred years.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 shows a bleach mill to the west of the present building, and the surrounding ground to the north and south was used as bleaching greens. The house is captioned 'Bann Vale' on this map and is shown as a rectangular dwelling with a rear courtyard and surrounding outbuildings. The Townland Valuation records the property as a 'house, offices and old mills', with the old mills described as having 'old machinery all in a state of decay', suggesting they had been out of use for some years by that time. The property belonged to James Uprichard and was valued at £22 12s. The valuation records a two-storey house in sound order and good repair, along with a coach house, stables, barn, dog house, privies, and piggery, some of which appear to have been thatched. The gate house, described as 'deteriorated by age', is also listed.

James Uprichard and his younger brothers Thomas and Henry founded the linen bleaching company J, T and H Uprichard. Shortly after 1830 they acquired a bleach works at Springvale in Lawrencetown, financing the purchase in part by selling some of their land at Bannvale to Hugh Dunbar, who used it to establish the Dunbar McMaster linen thread mill at Gilford. The bleach works at Bannvale appears to have fallen into disuse once Springvale was acquired. Springvale Bleach Works became a highly successful enterprise, expanded by William Uprichard in 1884 at a cost of £10,000, and it eventually closed in 1955.

On James Uprichard's death in 1840 the house passed to his second son William. By the time of Griffith's Valuation of around 1861 a coachman's house had been added and the valuation had risen to £36 and then £56, reflecting remodelling and improvements including the addition of a double-height extension to the front facade — this extension is first shown on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–2. The property remained in Uprichard ownership until the early decades of the 20th century. Henry Albert Uprichard inherited it on his father's death in 1884 but let it to various tenants during the 1890s, preferring nearby Elmfield Castle as his main residence. At the time of the 1901 census, however, the family was in residence: Henry, his second wife Beatrice, six children from his first and second marriages, Beatrice's mother from Waterford, and four female servants. Henry Albert Uprichard died in November 1901 and left Bannvale to his second son, also called Henry Albert, together with a share in Springvale Bleach Works. Henry Albert junior was by then working as a tea merchant in the firm of Forster Green & Co, founded by his grandfather, and in due course became Managing Director.

Henry Albert Uprichard (1880–1916) lived in the house intermittently in the early 20th century, but by 1911 it had been let to a widow, Anne Jane Kane, her two daughters, and a single domestic servant. Kane appears to have been related by marriage to the Uprichards; Henry Albert's brother William had married Nancy Kane, daughter of the Rector of Tullylish. Major Henry Albert Uprichard was Commander of the 2nd Battalion of the West Down regiment of the Ulster Volunteer Force. He enlisted at the outbreak of the First World War and was killed in action during the attack on Thiepval in July 1916. He is commemorated by the Major Uprichard Memorial Orange Hall at Tullylish. Uprichard had been a wealthy man, having inherited a portion of his grandfather's fortune, and was an enthusiastic polo player and participant in steeplechase and point-to-point meetings, hunting with the County Down Staghounds and the Iveagh Harriers.

After Major Uprichard's death the house was sold. From the autumn of 1916 it was used as an orthopaedic hospital for wounded soldiers, extending the facilities at nearby Dunbarton House by a further 30 beds. The house was subsequently let to a succession of tenants: David Pedlow (1920), George Brown (1922), Captain Grant (1927), John Grant (1928), Joseph Boyce (1934), and Thelma Ruth Hill (1935), though it was frequently vacant during this period. By 1934 the accommodation comprised on the ground floor two reception rooms, an office, kitchen, scullery, and three pantries, and on the first floor seven bedrooms, a dressing room, a study, two bathrooms, and two WCs. The house was revalued at £80 in the First General Revaluation and reduced to £65 on appeal in 1935 on account of bad repair, damp, and dry rot. The rent was £90 per annum plus rates, considered low at the time.

In 1941 the property was requisitioned and additional temporary buildings were constructed in the grounds for the War Department. After the war, in 1946, it was purchased by Dunbar McMaster and Co Ltd of the local spinning mill with a view to converting it into a hostel for female workers, and some alterations were made to that end. This scheme was short-lived, and in 1951 the house, buildings, and 13 acres of land were purchased by the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority for £5,000 for use as a hospital for the treatment of boys described as 'mentally defective'. Offices and a staff room occupied the ground floor and six dormitories housing 32 boys were on the first floor; as occupational therapy, the boys were encouraged to undertake light work in the grounds. On conversion to hospital use the building was revalued at £130 in 1952 and £180 in 1955, when the temporary wartime buildings were demolished and self-contained units were added to house a further 40 boys, consisting of weatherboarded dormitories and a dining room, a brick kitchen, day room, and boiler room, and brick connecting passages. The building appears on maps of the 1960s and 1970s as the 'Bannvale (Special Care Unit)'. By the 1980s it had become a centre for learning for disabled adults. The Southern Trust moved out in the mid-1980s and the patients were transferred to new accommodation in the grounds. Bannvale then fell into disrepair, but was restored in 1990 under the supervision of Victor Marshall, architect of Dungannon. In 1993 an extension was built to the south-west corner and a portion of the rear was demolished, work carried out to designs by the Estate Management department of Craigavon Area Hospital. The building is now used as an administration building for the Southern Health and Social Care Trust.