Loughbrickland House, Loughbrickland, Co Down, BT32 3NH

Loughbrickland House is a two-storey, five-bay detached country house with an attached farmyard, built around 1785 and located on the east side of Scarva Street in Loughbrickland, County Down. It was extended to the northwest in 1826 to designs by the architect Thomas Duff, and again to the southeast in 1869. The house was formerly known as Colnacran Lodge and has remained in the ownership of the Whyte family from its construction to the present day, making it a notable example of an unbroken line of Irish gentry. It does not appear on Taylor and Skinner's maps of 1777, but is shown captioned on an 1810 map of County Down; surviving family papers from 1785, held at PRONI, include calculations of yardage of masonry and tiling used to estimate payments to tradesmen, suggesting the house was newly built in that year.

The plan is L-shaped, with a projecting entrance porch (added 1826) to the front, a full-height canted bay window to the left of the principal elevation (also 1826), and a gabled bay to the right enclosing a full-height bowed bay with three windows to each floor (1869). A double return projects to the rear, abutted by a single-storey lean-to extension. To the southeast, a two-storey projecting box bay is abutted by a conservatory. The principal southwest-facing elevation is almost symmetrically arranged, with the central section three openings wide and the projecting porch at its centre.

The roof is pitched natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles, simple bargeboards, and painted smooth render chimneystacks with moulded caps and tall terracotta pots. Rainwater goods are cast-iron ogee profile on an ovolo moulded eaves course. External walls are roughcast render on a smooth rendered plinth, with a string course between floors at the gabled bay. The entrance porch is painted smooth render.

Windows are a variety of timber sliding sash, mainly two-over-two to the first floor and one-over-one to the ground floor, with projecting stone sills. The entrance porch is flanked by a single tripartite window comprising a two-over-two sash flanked by narrow one-over-one sashes. The northwest elevation has a three-over-three sash to the left at first floor level. The rear northeast elevation has a six-over-three sash to the upper right; the double return is entered by a modern flush door off-centre to the left, with two timber casement windows at different levels to the first floor and a timber casement window together with a modern lean-to extension at ground floor right. The northwest elevation of the return has two windows to each floor, and is partially recessed to the right with diminutive windows to both floors. The southeast elevation of the return is abutted at the re-entrant angle by the two-storey box bay and conservatory, with two timber casement windows to the first floor and also to the ground floor right, and a two-over-two sash to the ground floor left. The southeast elevation of the main house has a gabled breakfront to the centre, flanked by one-over-one sashes at both first and ground floor level.

The entrance porch is set on a masonry plinth with corner pilasters surmounted by an entablature and a corniced parapet. Round-arched windows with glazing bars light each cheek. The door itself is a six-panelled bolection moulded timber door set in a chamfered and moulded recess with a brass knob, accessed via two bull-nosed steps.

Directly to the rear is a partially cobbled yard with various renovated rubble stone outbuildings with red-brick dressings, now in use as holiday accommodation. To the north is a further yard accessed through round rubble stone piers with masonry caps supporting modern metal gates, enclosed by a converted coach house to the south and a double-height barn to the west. A carriage arch to the northeast, containing metal gates, gives access to the walled garden. The house occupies a large site surrounded by mature trees with views over surrounding farmland. It is reached by a long tarmacadam lane leading to a gravelled courtyard to the rear, accessed via a rubble stone elliptical arch. The southern boundary is formed by a roughcast rendered wall with four square gate piers with pointed caps supporting cast-iron gates. At the east side of the entrance is a single-storey gate lodge which appears to have been extensively remodelled; the original gate lodge has been lost and this replacement is considered inappropriate in scale and materials, detracting from the character of the main entrance.

The interior has been remodelled to accommodate two separate dwellings, though the floor plan is largely unchanged. At the time of the First General Revaluation (1933–57), the ground floor accommodation comprised a hall, library, drawing room, dining room, breakfast room, kitchen, scullery with hot and cold water, larder, butler's pantry with hot and cold water, a servants' hall, a storeroom, and an office. The first floor contained seven bedrooms, two dressing rooms, a nursery, schoolroom, two bathrooms with hot and cold water and WC, a separate WC, and a housemaid's room with hot and cold water. The second floor held four attic bedrooms, a box room, and a boarded roof space. There were four cellars in the basement. Outside was an engine house containing a ten horsepower crude oil engine for powering electric light and a water pump. Outbuildings at that time included a garage, fowl houses, byres, a greenhouse, piggery, and gate lodge, with grounds including a croquet lawn, lawns, flowerbeds, and a plantation. In 1935, following an appeal, a valuer assessed the house as a "large old type country residence, substantially built, moderately well finished internally and generally in fair state of repair," noting that it was inconveniently laid out with a considerable amount of waste space and accommodation in excess of normal requirements. The large drawing room was unfurnished and the kitchen partly disused and in need of modernising; the valuation was subsequently reduced from £70 to £65.

The history of the house reflects closely the history of the Whyte family, one of the oldest Catholic gentry families in Ireland. The family traces its descent from Ethelbert Le Whyte, Chief Justice in Pembroke in the late 12th century; his son Walter accompanied Strongbow to Ireland in 1170 and was knighted by Henry II in 1171, receiving large grants of land on the west shore of Strangford Lough. His descendant Sir Nicholas Whyte of Leixlip was Member of Parliament for Kilkenny County in 1559, Seneschal of County Waterford in 1560, and Master of the Rolls in Ireland in 1572. The family connection to Loughbrickland came through Mary Purcell, a granddaughter of Frances Whitchurch — daughter and heiress of Sir Marmaduke Whitchurch, who had been granted the lands by Queen Elizabeth in 1585 and established the town, castle, church, and mill — and Marcus Trevor, first Viscount Dungannon. Mary Purcell married John Whyte of Leixlip Castle in 1704.

The Whytes were remarkable for having retained both their Catholic faith and their lands throughout the Penal Laws, a circumstance thought to have been facilitated by their relationship with the Trevor family and the involvement of Arthur Hill, also related to the Trevors, as a leasing party in Whyte leases. As a prominent Catholic family, their views were sought on Catholic Emancipation; in 1829 Nicholas Whyte was assured that a petition he had drawn up from the Catholics of County Down in favour of emancipation would "ensure the ready and favourable reception" of the Bill in the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards, Nicholas Whyte was made Sheriff of County Down, a position for which he had not previously been eligible.

The 1826 extension was commissioned by Nicholas C. Whyte (1784–1844), who had inherited the estate from his father John Whyte after his elder brother had been disinherited, and who is thought to have been the first of the family actually to reside at Loughbrickland, his ancestors having been absentee landlords pursuing military careers. A considerable number of papers survive relating to this remodelling at PRONI, including rejected designs, correspondence with Duff, and tradesmen's accounts. Whyte's correspondence with Duff records that he found the winds at the front of the house "fierce" and wanted a closed porch, along with a drawing room commanding a full view of the lake. Duff suggested the external appearance should "imitate the old English Manor House which style would look well in such situation." Duff was also at around the same time the designer of Loughbrickland's Catholic church. The house, porch, and bow-fronted extension are shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, captioned as Loughbrickland House, together with the double-pile return and courtyard outbuildings to the rear. The house is valued at £32 in the 1830s Townland Valuation.

Nicholas C. Whyte died in 1844 and was succeeded by his son John Joseph Whyte, then still a minor, who is listed as occupier in Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64, at which point the house, offices, and two gate lodges are valued at £45. In 1869 the house was extended by another bay to the southeast and the valuation consequently raised to £75. John Joseph Whyte served as Sheriff of County Down in 1862–63 and as a Deputy Lieutenant of Down from 1863; his journal of a visit to Palestine in 1850 survives. At the 1901 census the family were absent and only servants were in residence — a farm servant, laundress, and general domestic — in what was recorded as a first-class dwelling of 20 rooms with 17 outbuildings, owned by John J. Whyte of Dublin. By 1911 two of John Joseph Whyte's daughters, Nancy Corbally (née Whyte) and Kathleen Whyte, were living at the house, with a staff comprising a nurse from Manchester, a cook from County Meath, and a house and parlour maid.

John Joseph Whyte died in August 1916 and was succeeded by his eldest surviving son George Thomas Whyte, followed after George Thomas's death in 1919 by his wife Magdalena Esther Whyte. George Thomas was in turn succeeded by his brothers: first Major Thomas Aloysius Whyte, who died in 1931, and then Lieutenant-Colonel William Henry Whyte DSO of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who had served with distinction in the Boer War and in the First World War of 1914–18, during which he was three times wounded and three times mentioned in dispatches. He died in 1949 and was described in the Newry Reporter as a "member of an old and esteemed Loughbrickland family." He had been president of the Warrenpoint and Rostrevor Branch of the British Legion, had commanded the 3rd (Down) Battalion of the Home Guard from 1940 to 1942, and had been prominent in the Recruiting and Savings Campaign in Newry during the war.

During the Second World War, in 1941, 28 acres of the grounds were occupied by the War Department, followed by a further 16 acres, and in 1942 part of the house itself was requisitioned: three rooms on the ground floor, four rooms on the first floor, the back hall on the ground floor, and approximately 40 per cent of the main hall and corridors. In 1953 part of the house comprising five rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen, together with a garage and garden, was let by Magdalena Whyte to Norman G. D. Ferguson for £160 per annum and a third of the rates.

The house remains in private ownership. The evolution of the building is of particular interest both as a well-preserved example of a late 18th-century house and as a documented example of the work of Thomas Duff, a notable local architect. The walled garden survives and adds to the historic interest of the site.