Pavilion, Milford Manor House, Ballyards Road, Milford, Co Armagh, BT60 3PD

Pavilion, Milford Manor House, dating from approximately 1880 to 1890

This is a detached, single-storey garden pavilion built in the late Victorian period, set within the grounds of Milford Manor House on the Milford Lodge estate, which adjoins the southern boundary of Milford village. It is one of very few surviving late Victorian sporting structures of its kind in the region, and for that reason alone it is of considerable historic interest. It also has group value with the listed main house, the listed fountain, and the listed gate lodge at the entrance to the grounds.

Setting

A long straight driveway runs due south from the village before curving west to the main manor entrance. Just north of the house, set back approximately 50 metres on the western side of the driveway, stands a modern single-storey building. A walled garden lies a further 50 metres to the west. The pavilion sits between the walled garden and the modern single-storey building. The grounds are grassed across the central areas and the boundary is quite heavily wooded.

Exterior

The pavilion has a rectangular footprint with a centrally placed single-storey return to the rear. Its most striking external feature is the wide, deeply overhanging hipped roof, which is one of the defining characteristics of this building. The roof is divided into three hipped sections: the main roof, a smaller projecting canopy to the front, and the roof over the rear return. Both the main roof and the canopy have deep overhangs carried on large, decorative gallows brackets — described as almost exaggerated in scale — while the return has a shallower, unsupported overhang. The soffits beneath these deep overhangs are finished with timber boarding laid in a herringbone pattern. The roof covering is black fibre cement slate with matching ridge tiles, and the rainwater goods are formed in extruded aluminium.

The front, east-facing façade is symmetrical. At its centre is a projecting canopy supported on two freestanding timber posts. Large gallows brackets support the deep roof overhang at the front and outer edges of the posts, with further matching brackets continuing along the north and south façades. Solid carved timber brackets are fixed to the rear and inner faces of the posts, creating an arched effect at the front entrance. Recessed into the centre of the east façade is an open porch, with an entrance door in each of the two exposed cheek walls. Either side of the canopy are two-bay glazed timber screens; each bay contains two glazed panels with fixed ladder lights surmounted by a top-hung opening light. Walls are finished in roughcast render. Window frames are timber, with a fixed lower light and a top-hung upper light. Doors are timber-panelled.

The north façade is blind. The west façade, on either side of the rear return, is also blind. The south elevation is blind. To the immediate south of the pavilion is a small open-air swimming pool; hit-and-miss timber fencing protecting the north and east boundaries of the pool encroaches onto the southern façade of the pavilion.

The rear return has two bricked-up window openings in its north face. Its west face has a central door opening flanked by a window opening on either side, all of which are bricked up. The south face of the return has one bricked-up window opening.

Interior

The front section of the interior has a boarded and coved ceiling, which is particularly noteworthy.

Historical background

On the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1835, the site now occupied by Milford Manor House and the pavilion was taken up by a small dwelling accessed by a long straight drive from the east. This building appears to be the one recorded in the 1836 valuation as a thatched structure then occupied by a James Oliver, measuring 44½ feet by 19½ feet by 7 feet, with a return of 8 by 8½ by 5 feet. Some distance to the north stood a larger dwelling marked on the 1835 map as Millford House, an old three-storey thatched residence of 40 by 28 by 22 feet with a single-storey return, recorded in the same valuation as the home of John McKay. North of that, on the other side of the road, stood Millford Mills, the property of William McCrum (1795–1879), whose substantial house, measuring 44 by 22 by 21 feet with a lower one-and-a-half-storey return, was either attached to the mill building or more likely stood just to the north of it.

On the revised six-inch map of 1860 the same buildings are shown. By the time of the approximately 1862 valuation, Millford House was in the possession of Anne MacKay, and William McCrum was still living beside his mill. The small dwelling to the south had by then become the home of a John McIntyre, but within a year or two the lease of it and its land had been acquired by or passed to Osborne Kidd, with the house itself reported as getting dilapidated and vacant.

Sometime between 1862 and 1867 — local historian Stephen-Paul McManus suggests 1864 — William McCrum's son, Robert Garmany McCrum (1827–1915), took on the lease of the site and began building a new house on a larger scale, which eventually evolved into the present Manor House. Whether he retained anything of the older building is uncertain. Map evidence shows the older building stood in the same position as the rear end of the new structure and it was likely cleared at some point after 1865 to make way for it. In 1872 Robert McCrum also acquired Millford House to the north, demolishing it within the following decade — it had gone by 1882 — and using the land apparently for farming. He continued to enlarge his new residence, adding further sections, apparently at least partly to his own designs and mainly in concrete, in 1882, 1886, 1889, and 1899, with more new buildings in progress noted in 1904. A valuer's note made in 1904 or 1905 remarks that much had been taken down and rebuilt, at an estimated cost of £5,336.

At what stage the pavilion was added to the site is difficult to determine. McManus believed it to have been the original McCrum family homestead, but this is not supported by the historical sources: the only earlier McCrum house known of was beside the mill, and the spot on which the pavilion stands appears to have been vacant until at least 1862. It is possible that a house previously standing in the general vicinity, apparently cleared by Robert in the 1860s, did once belong to the family, but neither its size as recorded in the 1836 valuation nor its position matches that of the pavilion. In any case the design and construction of the pavilion do not suggest it was ever a dwelling.

The first firm documentary evidence relating to the building is a detailed plan of the Manor House and its associated structures drawn up by valuers in 1904. On this plan the building is designated as a tennis pavilion and recorded as a wooden structure with a tiled roof, measuring 33 feet by 16 feet by 10 feet, with the rear projection measuring 13 by 13 by 9 feet. Its appearance suggests it could date from as early as the mid-1880s, a period when Robert Garmany McCrum's building activity appears to have been particularly prolific. The timberwork shows certain affinities with that of the gate lodge at the entrance to the grounds, which is believed to date from the same decade and may have been the work of the architects Young and McKenzie. It is possible that the building was commissioned by Robert's son and heir, William McCrum (died 1932) — known as Master Willie — who had sporting interests and is credited with inventing the penalty kick in association football.

The Manor House passed into William McCrum's ownership in 1915. Never adept at business, he suffered heavy losses in the Crash of 1929, was forced to auction the contents of the house the following year, and sold the mill the year after that. He died penniless in 1932 and the Manor House passed into the ownership of the Northern Bank. In 1936 the bank leased it to a private boarding school for girls, Manor House School, which bought the property outright for £3,000 in 1940. The school closed in 1965 and in 1966 the property was sold to the Northern Ireland Hospital Authority for use as a special care home. This closed in 1988 and the property has remained vacant since then.

McManus states that during the tenure of Manor House School the pavilion was used as a classroom and later as a changing room, while the room at the back became known as the Den and was used by senior pupils. He adds that in 1940 the trees around it were cleared and three tennis courts were built opposite. Given that the building had functioned as a tennis pavilion since at least 1904 and was probably purpose-built as such, there must presumably have been courts close to it from the outset.