Brookfield House, 65 Scarva Road, Banbridge, County Down, BT32 3QD

Brookfield House, 65 Scarva Road, Banbridge

Brookfield House is a symmetrical three-bay, two-storey country house thought to have been built around 1760, most likely for Brice Smyth, founder of a linen dynasty that occupied the property for over two hundred years. The house was subsequently remodelled around 1840 to designs by the architect Thomas Jackson, incorporating the earlier farmhouse as part of the extended plan. It stands in extensive grounds to the north side of Scarva Road, west of Banbridge town centre, in the townland of Drumnagally. The house has recently been severely damaged by fire and vandalism and is now abandoned, though historic detailing and the early 19th-century floor-plan survive and the historic character remains discernible. The property has strong associations with the local linen industry and carries group value with its two gate-lodges and original gates.

Architectural Description

The main rectangular block dates from around 1830 and adjoins a parallel wing of around 1760 to the north, with a two-storey return to the rear. The rear return is abutted at right angles to the north by two-storey outbuildings, forming a central yard. The roof has been severely damaged by fire; it was formerly hipped, with some natural slates remaining. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are carried on bracketed timber eaves. The walling is harled render with a smooth plat-band between the floors. Windows are largely damaged or infilled with concrete blocks; those surviving are 6/6 timber-framed sash windows without glazing, with projecting sills.

The principal south-facing elevation is five openings wide on each floor. At ground-floor centre is a tetrastyle portico with fluted columns and pilaster responds, a plain entablature, and a parapet topped by a decorative cast-iron balustrade. The entrance door has been infilled with concrete blocks, but an ornate carved timber fanlight and a six-panelled timber door survive. The west elevation has a single window to the first-floor centre. The north elevation is almost entirely abutted by the original house of around 1760, which forms a parallel wing, itself abutted to the right by the two-storey rear return. The west gable of the original house has three windows to each floor; the east gable has two windows to each floor.

The two-storey rear return is six openings wide at first-floor level and four openings wide at ground-floor level, most openings being infilled with concrete blocks. The east elevation of the return has external steps leading to a timber-sheeted door at first-floor right, and remnants of a timber-sheeted door at ground-floor left, along with three surviving 1/1 timber-framed windows to the first floor. The east elevation of the main block has a single window at first-floor centre.

Setting and Outbuildings

The house is set in extensive mature grounds to the west of Banbridge town centre, accessed from the south by a tree-lined track leading to a farmyard to the east. Two gate-lodges flank the entrance. To the southeast of the house stands a former weaving factory with a tall red-brick chimney and associated early 20th-century factory buildings. The yard contains a variety of single and two-storey rendered outbuildings, some retaining timber-sheeted doors and timber-framed sash windows. The outbuilding to the east has a slated roof with a square metal dovecote to the ridgeline. To the north of the site is a former two-storey coach-house and adjoining stable block, both in a dilapidated state, with red-brick chimneystacks to the gables and some timber-framed sliding sash windows with projecting granite sills.

The garden is enclosed to the northeast by a tall rendered wall with an elliptical-headed arch to the yard, fitted with original wrought-iron gates. The rear yard is accessed to the east through original square gate piers with pointed caps supporting original wrought-iron gates. To the west of the garden is a Victorian folly in the form of a Gothic stone arch over a pathway. The land to the south of the site, on either side of the entrance, has recently been developed with a housing estate of two-storey semi-detached red-brick dwellings.

Historical Background

Brookfield House is thought to have been built around 1760 by Brice Smyth, the founder of a linen dynasty. The associated manufacturing concern operated from the rear of the house in its early days and grew substantially over the following century. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 shows Brookfield as a large house on a complex plan with extensive outbuildings housing a linen thread concern, with gate-lodges shown at the head of the driveway. The second edition of 1860 records the house as having been remodelled, with a porch shown to the front facade. This edition also captions gate-lodges, a summer house, and a boiling house on the river to the east. By the fourth edition of 1903–18, the boiling house had expanded into Brookfield Factory, a flourishing concern occupying a large site beside the house.

The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 lists the occupier as Brice Smith and records the property as a house, offices, and a linen thread manufactory together valued at £38, noting dimensions for the house and four returns and for the thread and brown cloth manufactory. A room in the inner courtyard, approached by stone steps, was reputedly used by Brice Smyth to receive and check cloth from local cottage weavers to whom he supplied thread; it was later converted into a billiard room by William Anderson Smyth and hung with sporting pictures, especially of the hunt. A two-storey building in the outer courtyard is said to have served as a school, with the principal's house beside it.

Brice Smyth (1796–1851) was blinded by smallpox at the age of twelve but overcame his disability and succeeded his father in the business, building Brice Smyth and Sons into a very successful firm specialising in the manufacture of heavy shirting linen. He became a renowned teacher in the linen industry, instructing many of the men who went on to found the great linen firms of Ulster. He was able to judge the quality of cloth by rubbing his fingernail over it to count the number of threads per inch. On one occasion he is reputed to have detected a weaver stealing hanks of weft by noticing that the man was holding his breath. From the 1830s onward Brice Smyth was employing 2,000 weavers and importing mill-spun yarn from England, which would be boiled, sorted, and wound at Brookfield before being distributed to the weavers. Brice Smyth died in 1851, leaving his fifteen-year-old son William to take over the firm.

Brice Smyth's sons and grandsons all joined the linen trade. One grandson, John Smyth, bought land at Lenaderg and built Milltown House, also thought to have been designed by Thomas Jackson. Another grandson, also named Brice, remained at Brookfield.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 records the owner as William Smyth, Brice Smyth's son and heir, who leased the property from Isabella Dunbar, a sister of linen manufacturer Hugh Dunbar. The house is valued at £45 and situated in an estate of over 66 acres. The valuer describes it as a very good house with a handsome portico, plastered and stone finished, with a neat lawn, and notes that the outbuildings were formerly used as a thread factory. The gate-houses, situated in a neighbouring townland and valued separately at £2 10s, are noted as having very small apartments.

The nearby weaving factory was built in 1884 at a cost of £1,500 and was periodically expanded in 1888, 1892, 1896, 1911, and 1920. William Smyth lived at Brookfield until his death in 1913 and, together with his son William Anderson Smyth, built the new power-loom factory beside the family home. The firm was subsequently renamed Smyth's Weaving Co Ltd, specialising in the manufacture of fine and coarse linens. William Smyth was one of the largest employers in the Banbridge district and a prominent local figure, serving on the County Council, active in the Banbridge Agricultural and Farming Society, a senior elder at Scarva Street Presbyterian Church, and superintendent of the Sabbath School for fifty years.

The avenue leading to Brookfield, lined with mature beech trees, also served as the main access to the factory. The house was self-sufficient and had a three-acre walled garden, reputedly built during the Famine to provide employment to local people. A grotto icehouse in the ornamental gardens still stands, though a Gothic summerhouse has since been demolished. A stream to the milldam ran through the gardens, only a few yards from the summerhouse.

At the time of the 1901 census, William Smyth, a linen merchant aged 65, was living at Brookfield with his wife from County Limerick, his son David Wilson Smyth, and his married daughter Lucinda Evelyn Ferguson. The family employed two domestic servants, both unmarried women in their twenties, one of whom was the cook. The house had 16 rooms and was designated first class by the census. By the 1911 census, William Smyth had become a magistrate and was living with two adult children, one of whom, Edmund Fitzgerald Smyth, later fell in the First World War. The family continued to keep two servants, both of whom were Roman Catholic.

After William Smyth's death the house passed to his widow, his second wife Jane Robinson Smyth. One of their daughters, Lucinda, married into the Ferguson family, who were briefly resident in the 1930s and 1940s before the house passed to David Wilson Smyth in 1950. At the time of the First General Revaluation in 1933–34, the occupier was Colonel J D Ferguson, who leased the house from David W Smyth. The house and outbuildings were revalued at £56 and most of the agricultural land had been separated off, leaving just seven acres. The accommodation comprised eight bedrooms, three reception rooms, two and later three bathrooms, a cloakroom and lavatory, a billiard room, kitchen, scullery, and washhouse. Electric light was supplied initially from works and later from mains; central heating was provided by a boiler in the cellar. The house was described at that time as old-fashioned but partly modernised and poor at the rear. Ferguson paid a rent of £100 per annum free.

During the Second World War, Brookfield factory wove aircraft linen to cover Mosquito planes, khaki for soldiers' uniforms, and tent duck, a thread used for army tents. After the war, Smyths amalgamated with a Dungannon company to form Moygashel Ltd, which was taken over in 1964 by the textile giant Courtaulds. Courtaulds raised wages, introduced an automatic loom that produced more cloth with less labour, and introduced a housewife's shift from 5.30 to 10 pm. The factory at Brookfield closed in December 1980, with a recession in the domestic textile market and a strong pound cited as causes, though the firm continued to weave in Dungannon. The former factory is now derelict.

David Wilson Smyth, who lived in the house from 1950, was for many years a director of Smyth's Weaving Co Ltd. He later became a director of the Belfast Ropeworks Co Ltd and was involved with the Northern Ireland Transport Board and its successor the Ulster Transport Authority, becoming Vice-Chairman in later life. He was a keen golfer and won the Irish Open Amateur Championship in 1921.

The house was listed in 1976 and repairs and renovations took place in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993 the house was sold to a local farmer who intended to convert it into a guest house; these plans never came to fruition and the house was sold again. Since 2011, fires and vandalism have destroyed much of the fabric of the house, leaving it almost a shell.