Lenaderg House, 151 Lurgan Road, Banbridge, Co. Down, BT32 4NP

Lenaderg House

Lenaderg House is a fine late 18th century country house built around 1780, associated with the linen industry of the Bann Valley. It stands on the east side of Lurgan Road in the townland of Lenaderg, and is L-shaped on plan, with a two-storey wing to the northeast. Many original features and much historic fabric survive, and the overall character of the house and its small demesne remains largely unchanged. The listing extends to the house itself, the boundary walls, the gates, and the railings.

Architectural Description

The main house is symmetrical, two storeys high, and three bays wide, with a two-storey gabled porch added to the front in the mid-19th century. The roof is hipped, with leaded ridges and hips, and a variety of roughcast rendered chimneystacks with clay pots. Rainwater goods are cast-iron half-round, fixed to slightly projecting eaves. The walls are roughcast render on a smooth render plinth. The roof is covered in natural slate.

The principal elevation faces south-east and is arranged symmetrically around the central two-storey gabled porch. The porch has flat-headed recesses at each floor on all faces, and paired round-arched 1-over-1 sash windows to the first floor. The entrance door is four-panelled with brass door furniture, set in a moulded lugged architrave, and is reached by two bull-nosed stone steps. Each cheek of the porch has a round-arched 1-over-1 window at ground floor and a 1-over-1 window at first floor. The porch itself has a corbel course between floors and above the first-floor windows. To either side of the porch, at each floor, are two windows. Throughout the house, windows are generally 6-over-6 timber sliding sash in moulded architraves with projecting stone sills, unless otherwise noted.

The south-west elevation has two windows at each floor with a tall central wall-headed chimney. The rear abutment has two widely spaced paired multi-paned windows at ground floor with two further windows directly above. At the re-entrant angle, a two-storey flat-roofed sanitary extension has been added, with two 1-over-1 windows to the left and a small window to the right on its north-west face, and a 6-over-6 window at first floor on its south-west face.

The north-west (rear) elevation of the return has two windows to the first floor, the one to the right being 2-over-2. A single-storey hipped-roofed extension abuts at the left. The north-east elevation is joined at its centre by the two-storey side wing. To the right of this junction is a 2-over-2 window at first floor and two replacement uPVC windows at ground floor. The left side has a 6-over-6 window at first floor and a panelled-and-glazed timber door at ground floor. At the re-entrant angle where the northeast wing meets the main house, there is a 6-over-6 window at each floor.

The two-storey north-east wing has four 6-over-6 windows at first floor, and four sets of glazed double-leaf doors with square-headed overlights at ground floor. The first door from the left and the third from the right are each reached by a set of three bull-nosed steps. The north-east gable of the wing is blank. The north-west elevation of the wing has three 6-over-6 windows at first floor, the one to the left being more widely spaced than the others. At ground floor, there is a paired glass panel door with overlight to the left, two 6-over-6 windows, and a timber-sheeted door with brass door furniture to the right.

Setting

The house occupies a large site surrounded by mature trees, approached by a gravelled lane from the south-west leading to a gravelled courtyard at the rear. The boundary with Lurgan Road is formed by a rubble stone wall with mature trees and hedgerow. The curved entrance has decorative cast-iron railings on a painted plinth wall, with slender metal piers supporting a set of original cast-iron gates. The walled garden is laid to lawn and includes a modern tennis court at its north-west end.

To the rear of the house stands a refurbished two-storey rubble stone barn with a hipped roof, smooth rendered quoins, and red-brick dressings. It has three replacement uPVC windows at first floor, and at ground floor, timber-sheeted doors with glazed overlights in stone surrounds to left and right, with a carriage arch at the centre containing large timber-sheeted doors. Behind the barn is a single-storey converted summer house with conservatory overlooking the garden to the east.

Historical Background

The site has early origins. According to Samuel Lewis, writing in 1837, a building known as 'Lenaderg Cottage' was established by the Weir family in 1645 as an asylum for officers of the royal army stationed on the River Bann during the war of 1641. The historian Rankin records that a portion of the rear of the house dates from the 1690s, while the main house is late 18th century in date. The house was refaced in the late 19th century.

By the time of the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, the house appears as a rectangular building with attached outbuildings forming a courtyard to the rear. The double-height porch, added around 1855, appears for the first time on the second edition map of 1860.

In 1831 the house was home to William Weir, and by 1837 to Thomas Weir, according to Public Record Office of Northern Ireland sources and Lewis's Topographical Dictionary. The Weirs were cousins of the Smyth family, prominent linen merchants who lived nearby at Milltown House and later at Bellfield. The two families were also business partners, and in 1849 launched the firm Smyth, Weir & Co., linen manufacturers, bleachers and merchants, with offices in Donegall Place, Belfast, and a bleach works at Milltown near Lenaderg House. At the time of the Townland Valuation of 1828 to 1840, however, Thomas Weir had vacated the house and was living in a single-storey thatched cottage nearby. During this period, Lenaderg House was let to Hugh Hamilton Madden, curate of Tullylish parish from 1834 to 1835 and later Chancellor of Cashel. Madden's son was the Right Honourable Dodgson Hamilton Madden, Judge of the High Court of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of Dublin University.

In January 1843, the Belfast Newsletter recorded the death at the Cottage of William Weir's widow Jane, described as 'greatly loved for her disinterestedness and benevolence of character'. By 1855 the house had passed to William Smyth, eldest son of John Smyth Senior of Milltown House and a founder, with his siblings, of the company William Smyth & Co Ltd. This firm grew to employ more than 250 people. It was William Smyth who was responsible for remodelling the house around 1855 and adding the double-height porch to the front facade. Griffith's Valuation of 1856 to 1864 lists the house, offices, and land with buildings valued at £30, and records the property as leased from John Smyth & Son, later William Smyth & Co.

The company expanded rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. The railway line between Newry and Portadown, completed by 1852, provided a convenient means of transport for goods. In 1857 the Smyths acquired the Bannville Beetling Mill, and by that time had customers across the world, including in the USA, Italy, Russia, and Germany. An iron foundry was established in 1876 to serve both the company's own engineering needs and those of the wider local area. By 1886, according to Bassett's Directory, the bleach works and bleach greens covered 220 acres; the works were water-powered with steam as an auxiliary, and there were six iron water wheels.

William Smyth's wife Anna died in 1893, and Smyth himself died unexpectedly at Lenaderg House in March 1894. His obituary in the Belfast Newsletter described him as a 'highly estimable and very popular gentleman, open-hearted and kindly in disposition and very genial in manner', noting that he was 'a favourite with all who had the pleasure of his acquaintance' and that he was accustomed to visiting Belfast on a Friday 'where he had troops of friends who will deeply regret that they shall see his pleasant face no more'.

After Smyth's death the house was advertised to let, and was briefly occupied by Catherine Lindsay of the Lindsays of Tullyhenan, another family with a strong linen heritage. According to the 1901 census, Catherine was an unmarried woman of 51 who lived in the house with a single general domestic servant, a young woman of 17 from County Louth.

The house was then taken over by John Henry Davies, manager of the Milltown bleach works, who had previously worked for 40 years at Richardsons' bleach works at Glenmore. Davies was also a distinguished botanist. His obituary in the Irish Naturalist in November 1909 describes him as the author of numerous papers on mosses, noting that he had discovered several species new to Ireland and one new to the British Isles, with specimens held in the herbarium of Trinity College. The obituary recalled his 'tall and stately person, his handsome and kindly features, his genial manners, and aptitude and readiness in imparting information on botanical subjects, and his always having in his pockets specimens of some unusual form of some moss or other — what muscologists term "puzzles" — which he invariably produced and made the subject of conversation'.

According to the 1911 census, John Henry's son Arthur Crossfield Davies was by then the Director of the Bleach Works, living at Lenaderg House with his mother, three sisters, and a brother who was a manager at Hazelbank power loom factory. The family retained a general domestic servant. Arthur Crossfield Davies inherited his father's fascination with the natural world, eventually being elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1923. The First General Revaluation of 1933 to 1934 found him still in residence and recorded that he was then working as secretary to the firm of Smyth & Co. At that time the house was revalued at £56 and comprised seven bedrooms, three reception rooms, a cloakroom, a bathroom, three pantries, a kitchen, and a scullery. The valuer noted that it was an old-fashioned house in very good condition with exceptionally well-kept grounds.

When Milltown Bleach Works closed in 1940 the house was sold. An advertisement in the Irish Times of August 1944 described it as a 'desirable gentleman's residence and grounds, fitted throughout with all modern conveniences including electricity', with rooms including an entrance hall and large dining room, as well as a conservatory, forcing frames, and a potting shed. The outbuildings at that time included a cow byre, stabling with a storage loft for fruit above, a coach house, and a harness room. The house was subsequently occupied by Clifford R. Carter in 1949 and William J. Wilson in 1954, and remains in use as a private dwelling.

Lenaderg House is a fine and largely unaltered example of its type, reflecting directly the rise and development of the linen industry in the Bann Valley over more than two centuries.