Orchard County Hotel, 49-51 High St., Lurgan, Co.Armagh

What survives today is a freestanding wall — all that remains of a pair of late Georgian townhouses built between 1835 and 1837 on the eastern end of High Street in Lurgan town centre, at its junction with Malcolm Road. The two original houses were converted into the Orchard County Hotel in 1969, badly damaged by a nearby bomb in the 1970s, and subsequently demolished, leaving only the ground-level front façades standing. The wall, along with its original steps and railings, is listed for its local historic and architectural interest. It is currently recorded as derelict and lies within a conservation area.

The wall forms the partial front façades at ground-floor level of what were originally two matching townhouses. It is rendered and painted, with the surface ruled and lined to create a rusticated effect, and finished with a moulded plinth in painted masonry. The principal features are two identical neo-classical porticoes, one serving each former house. Each portico is open-fronted and carried on twin pairs of Ionic columns with moulded painted masonry bases, supporting an entablature with a Greek key fascia and a painted masonry moulded cornice. The underside of each porch has a modern fibreboard soffit with a light fitting. Behind each portico is a painted timber multi-panelled door with a plain overlight, now boarded with no glazing, flanked by pairs of Doric-style pilasters. The masonry steps in front of each portico have bullnose nosings: the right-hand portico has three steps and the left-hand portico has five. Decorative wrought iron railings on a painted masonry plinth flank each portico, enclosing a small paved area finished with concrete paviors and abutting the façade.

Between the two porticoes there are three square-headed window openings, with a further two openings to each outer side — seven openings in total across the façade. The window openings are boarded with panels printed with biblical text, and the cills are painted masonry. The rear face of the wall, which faces the Lurgan Gospel Hall to the east, is finished in plain roughcast render. A plain roughcast render boundary wall belonging to the Gospel Hall adjoins the façade to the east. To the west, the wall adjoins Nos. 45–47 High Street.

The site has a long and well-documented history. It occupies one of the narrow strip plots running either side of what is now Church Place, Market Street and High Street, most of which were laid out in the latter half of the 17th century. These strips derived from considerably larger plots established at the founding of the settlement of Ballylurgan in the early 1600s. As the town's population grew from the 1650s onwards, the original holdings were progressively subdivided: there were 43 tenements in 1659, rising to 79 in 1675, and 98 houses by 1693. The original detached low-lying houses within the broader plots gave way to narrower, taller dwellings built hard against one another. By the later 1690s the frontage onto the town green — then known as The Green of Lurgan, now Church Place — was fully developed, prompting the construction of a row of dwellings known as Middle Row, running down the centre of the street from the site of the present war memorial to a point roughly parallel with Castle Lane.

The specific site of Nos. 49–51 High Street appears to correspond to a property recorded as Clarkson and Vaughan's tenement in 1667, the lease of which had passed to Messrs Olive and Stuart by 1703. The 18th-century and early 19th-century history of the plot is difficult to trace. The present wall belongs to two houses of the 1830s. A datestone uncovered during building works in 1969 and noted in the First Survey report of that year indicates construction began in 1835. A valuation of July 1836 records that the shells of both houses were up at that point — No. 49 measuring 45 ft × 38 ft × 38 ft and No. 51 measuring 42½ ft × 38 ft × 38 ft — but that they would require about £1,000 to finish. They were still incomplete by October 1837, when the Ordnance Survey Memoirs described them as "2 very fine houses at present building by the Messrs Cuppage… of brick and stuccoed in imitation of Portland stone."

The builders were John and Henry Cuppage, members of a locally prominent family who had lived at Silverwood House, located to the south of the present Francis Street, since the mid-1600s, though that house has since been demolished. Henry went on to occupy No. 49 and John No. 51. One member of the Cuppage family had served in India during the later 18th century, fighting with distinction at the Siege of Vellore in 1780–82, and is believed to have married an Indian princess. It was in commemoration of this connection that John and Henry named their new houses Bengal Place.

By around 1860 the lease of No. 49 was in the hands of Robert Morris, while No. 51 was held by James Malcolm, a linen manufacturer whose premises, built in 1855, stood in the neighbouring Factory Lane — later renamed Malcolm Road in his memory. In the 1901 census, James Malcolm's son, also named James Malcolm, is recorded at No. 51 with his wife Elizabeth, their three grown-up daughters, and three domestic servants. The building was noted as a first-class dwelling containing 17 rooms. Members of the Malcolm family remained there until at least 1939. No. 49 stood vacant for some years following Robert Morris's death around 1879, before being sublet by his relations to Dr Samuel Agnew around 1885. The 1901 census records Dr Agnew at No. 49 with his wife Mary, their six children, and a domestic servant. Three of the children were still in residence at the time of the 1911 census, and Dr Agnew is listed in the valuations as occupant into the 1930s.

In 1969 both properties were converted into the Orchard County Hotel, with a large modern function room and kitchen extension added to the south-west. In 1974 a nearby bomb caused extensive damage and the hotel closed. The original 1830s houses were listed in 1976, but much of No. 49 collapsed in 1979 and No. 51 was pulled down either at the same time or shortly afterwards. The modern section to the rear was converted to a Gospel Hall around 1980. The lower sections of the walls of the older structures were capped and preserved at that time, and it is these that survive today.