Banford House, 56 Banbridge Road, Gilford, Craigavon, Co Down, BT63 6DJ

Banford House, Gilford, Co Down

Banford House is a mid-sized Georgian country house built around 1780, set on an elevated site to the north of Tullylish settlement overlooking the former bleachworks with which it was directly associated. It is one of several houses of similar scale in the district that owe their existence to the prosperity of the local linen industry, and it survives as a fine example of mid-Georgian architecture defined by graceful proportions and restrained Neoclassical ornament. Much original fabric remains intact, alongside evidence of Edwardian remodelling.

Exterior and Plan

The house is symmetrical in plan, three bays wide, three storeys over a semi-basement, with a rectangular footprint extended by a full-height rear wing built around 1910. A 19th-century conservatory abuts the east elevation and an Edwardian conservatory abuts the west. The roof is hipped natural slate with angled ridge and hip tiles, and two rendered chimneystacks with multiple pots sit on the ridge. The eaves have a painted stone cornice, and cast iron rainwater goods are of ogee profile. The walling is roughcast throughout, with sandstone quoins — the top quoin reeded — and a platband running between the basement and piano nobile levels.

Windows are generally timber sliding sash with simple horns, some retaining original crown glazing. Glazing patterns vary by floor: 3/6 to the basement, 6/6 to the piano nobile and first floor, and 3/3 to the second floor. On the principal façade, windows are set within moulded stone architraves with projecting sandstone sills; on the basement and secondary elevations they have slightly projecting rendered reveals. All doors except the principal entrance are modern timber.

Principal South Elevation

The symmetrical principal elevation faces south and is five windows wide, with windows graded in height over the semi-basement. At piano nobile level, a wide segmental arched entrance is reached by a flight of eight sweeping bull-nosed sandstone steps enclosed on either side by ornate cast iron balustrading. The doorcase is in painted stone with Ionic pilasters on plinth blocks flanking Edwardian stained and leaded glass sidelights and a painted timber seven-panelled door fitted with an Edwardian brass letterbox. The frieze above is Neoclassical in the Adam style: reeded at the centre with lion's head medallions and carved swags to either side. Above this sits a large spiderweb fanlight and a moulded archivolt. At first floor level, the central window is a tripartite arrangement — glazed 4/4, 6/6, and 4/4 — with pilastered mullions, set within a segmental arched sandstone surround with a moulded keyblocked archivolt, plain tympanum, and foliated pilasters. The basement extends to the left side, forming a room two windows wide.

West Elevation

The west elevation is abutted at piano nobile level by an Edwardian timber conservatory with a leaded pavilion roof. The conservatory is partially supported over the basement on the right and on cast iron columns with decorative capitals on the left. Ground floor windows on this elevation have been converted to internal access doors. The upper floors have windows to either side of a central blind window, all with architraves. The basement has two windows to the left, beneath the conservatory, while the projecting right side of the basement is blank. The conservatory has overhanging sheeted eaves on profiled brackets, full multi-paned glazing retaining original glass over a horizontally sheeted timber plinth, with lattice-paned transom glazing above. Double-leaf access doors are set into the west side, reached by metal steps.

Rear and East Elevations

The rear elevation is abutted on the left by the full-height flat-roofed extension built around 1910; the exposed right bay has a vertically aligned window to each floor. The extension has irregular fenestration, including round-arched windows to the north and east, and is abutted by a glazed lean-to supported over basement coal sheds to the west. Concrete steps lead to the basement level on the right side, which has timber doors to the right bay and the extension.

The east elevation is three windows wide to the upper floors, with an extension to the right and the earlier conservatory — built around 1880 — abutting on the left. At piano nobile level, the left window has been converted to provide access into the conservatory; the right has been converted to a glazed timber door reached by modern metal steps. The conservatory is timber framed over a rendered plinth with arcaded round-arched glazing and a raised glazed lantern to the roof.

Setting

The house occupies a prominent elevated position with views over the surrounding countryside and the Tullylish bleachworks to the south. The grounds are mature, with a gravel forecourt and a former bleach green to the south enclosed by sweeping beech avenues to the east and west. There is a lawn to the side and rear, bounded by mature trees and hedges. The former stableyard is now in separate ownership and has been redeveloped. Immediately to the north-east is a former walled kitchen garden with a round-arched timber-sheeted entrance gate set within a rubble stone and brick folly tower. The site is accessed through modern electronic metal gates on modern cement-rendered banded piers with urns.

Historical Background

Banford House was built around 1780 by Thomas Nicholson, son of the Quaker John Nicholson — and brother of General John Nicholson — who had established what is thought to have been the earliest bleach yard on the River Bann, using money granted by the Linen Board between 1727 and 1729. A contemporary account in the Post-Chaise Companion describes it as an "elegant new house." The house overlooks what was once an extensive bleach green, with the mill sited further south on a mill race within a loop of the Bann. The linen business and the house passed to Thomas's son Robert Jaffrey Nicholson, and linen weaving was carried on at the works until 1860.

The house and mill were sold around 1815 to Benjamin Haughton, proprietor of Benjamin Haughton & Co. By 1834, Haughton also owned a flour mill downriver to the west; Ordnance Survey Memoirs record his five water wheels in detail — three driving washing and beetling machinery and two driving grinding stones in the flour mill, all built or rebuilt in 1812. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 shows the house as a rectangular mansion with a return and a substantial stable courtyard to the rear. The Townland Valuation lists the occupier as Benjamin Hutton [sic], valuing the house and outbuildings at £36 11s, and records a coach house, stables and lofts, a cow house with lofts, a turf house and potato store, a pig house, and a steward's house among the outbuildings.

Benjamin Haughton died in 1862 and Thomas Haughton took over the house and business, bringing in Daniel Jaffe as a business partner in 1863, from which time the operation was known as Banford Bleach Works. In Griffith's Valuation the house appears as the property of Thomas Haughton in fee, valued at £55, with four two-storey and three single-storey outbuildings also listed. Daniel Jaffe's share of the business was bought by John Edgar in 1883, and Thomas Haughton died in 1888, leaving his property to linen merchants Thomas Sinton — who unfortunately predeceased him — and Hugh Watson. An auction of the house contents held in November 1888 included a Broadwood grand piano, walnut and mahogany furniture, and a fleet of vehicles: a brougham, landau, wagonette, phaeton, and others.

The property subsequently passed into Sinton family ownership but was let to tenants for some years, with a W G W Flynn recorded in the Annual Revisions. In 1900, Frederick Buckby Sinton, fifth son of Thomas Sinton, moved into the house. A linen manufacturer then aged 30, he is recorded in the 1901 census with his wife, baby daughters, and a staff of five including a professional nurse from England, a nurse from Wicklow, and three domestic servants. His wife died of tuberculosis in 1909; the 1911 census records him as a widower with five children and a household staff of two governesses (one English, one German), a parlourmaid from Kilkenny, a nurse, a housemaid, and a cook. A young relative of his wife was also living at the house and working as an apprentice bleacher. In 1911, Frederick Sinton commissioned architect Henry W E Hobart to design a complete wing at the back of the house, which increased the valuation to £40. Sinton remarried in 1912 — his wife's sister — and had three further children, bringing his total to eight. He died in 1943, and his wife Hanna Maria continued to live in the house until 1968. The house has since passed through a number of owners.