Aghaderg Glebe, 18 Grovehill Road, Drumnahare, Loughbrickland, Co Down, BT32 3NF

Aghaderg Glebe, 18 Grovehill Road, Drumnahare, Loughbrickland, Co Down

Aghaderg Glebe is a substantial two-storey late Georgian former glebe house, originally built around 1800, extended to the west around 1860, and restored and refurbished around 1950. It stands in an extensive landscaped setting east of Loughbrickland village, occupying a prominent position overlooking Lough Brickland to the south. The house is well proportioned, originally laid out on a symmetrical plan, and retains most of its historic fabric and detailing. It is a notable example of a Georgian house extended during the Victorian era, and its interest is further enhanced by traditionally constructed outbuildings and its original setting. The house was originally associated with St Mellan's Parish Church, Loughbrickland, and has later associations with local industrialists.

Architectural Description

The house is asymmetrical two-storey over basement, three bays wide on the principal elevation, with a west wing added around 1860 and a return to the rear. The roof is pitched and finished in natural slate, hipped over the west wing, and is partially concealed by an eaves cornice and stone blocking course. Several rendered chimneystacks carry octagonal clay pots. Rainwater goods consist of concealed gutters, cast-iron downpipes and hopper heads. The walls are finished in ruled-and-lined render with stepped quoins; the west wing has V-channelled granite quoins and a granite plinth.

Windows to the principal elevations are timber sliding sashes: tripartite arrangements of 2/2, 6/6 and 2/2 panes to the main elevation, slightly diminished in height at first floor. The west wing's canted bay features twinned 4/4 sashes with 2/2 sashes to the cheeks, divided by dressed granite mullions. Side elevations have 6/6 sashes, while the rear has a variety of sash windows and metal-framed casements.

The principal, south-facing elevation is extended by the west wing to the left. The main part of this elevation is symmetrically arranged across three openings, centred on a single-storey flat-roofed porch. The porch is plainly detailed, with pilaster strips to the corners supporting an entablature; it is lit by a 6/6 window with wide central panes to the south face, and accessed at the left cheek by a four-panelled timber door with a round-arched margined fanlight, cast-iron door furniture, a granite step and a cast-iron bootscraper. Behind the porch, the original entrance survives: a wide elliptical opening containing a six-flat-panelled timber door with cast-iron door furniture, ornate geometric sidelights and fanlight, set within a pilaster frame. The west wing is lit by a two-storey canted bay in dressed granite.

The west elevation has two windows to each floor. The rear elevation is abutted at the left bay by a two-storey over basement return. The right bay, belonging to the west wing, is lit by a bipartite 4/4 window to the first floor left and multi-pane metal casements to the ground floor — one narrow window to the centre and one to the left. The central bay is abutted by a flat-roofed stairwell extension, lit to the first floor by a large multi-pane metal casement with a smaller multi-pane metal casement beneath, and a timber entrance door to the right. The return is lit on either side by a variety of windows to each floor, with the basement exposed only at the gable and east cheek.

The west cheek of the return has two windows to the first floor; the ground floor is mostly abutted by a flat-roofed single-storey extension, which has two multi-pane windows at different levels and of different sizes on its west face, a timber glazed door to the right cheek, and a blank left cheek. The gable has a cast-concrete external stair leading to a glazed timber door at ground floor level, flanked by a metal casement window to the right and a blocked-up opening to the left; there are two timber casement windows to the basement — one directly beneath the external stair and one to the left — and a heavy string course at first-floor level, with the remainder of the gable blank. The east cheek has a variety of openings: four metal casement windows to the first floor, three to the ground floor (the central one deeply recessed), and two timber doors to the basement, with a 1/1 timber sliding sash (bottom sash timber-sheeted) to the far left and a timber casement window to the far right. The east elevation is over basement, accessed by a glazed timber door to the right and lit by a 6/6 window to the left; the only other opening is a slim metal casement to the first-floor right.

Setting

The house is set well back from but visible from the road, in an extensive landscaped setting with mature trees, shrubs and areas of lawn to the west, south and east, with a woodland setting and a burn to the east side. A tarmac forecourt to the front is accessed via a lane from the public road to the west, through a pair of metal gates on square granite piers with pyramidal caps. An alcoved entrance wall has a soldier coping.

To the rear is a sloping tarmac courtyard, with two outbuildings to the east and further outbuildings to the north and north-east. The courtyard is fully enclosed by a rubble stone wall and accessed on the north side by a pair of timber gates supported on square piers with brick quoins and pyramidal caps inset with granite pebbles. A west entrance retains its piers only.

Historical Notes

The house was erected as a glebe house in 1801. Samuel Lewis recorded that the Board of First Fruits gave £100 towards its erection in that year and also purchased a glebe of 24 acres for the vicar. It was built for Joseph McCormick, son of a Newry merchant, who became vicar in 1798. Subsequent occupants included Dominick Edward Blake of County Galway from 1814, and James Saurin — later Archdeacon of Dromore and son of the Bishop of Dromore — from 1823. The next incumbent from 1826 was Edward Richards, who was James Saurin's brother-in-law, having married Saurin's sister in 1824. Richards is listed as occupier in the Townland Valuation of 1828–40, which records dimensions for the house, return, basement and three outbuildings, one of which was thatched. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 shows the glebe house as a rectangular building with a return and several outbuildings to the rear; the buildings were valued at £17.

By the time of Griffith's Valuation (1856–64), the resident was Jeffry Lefroy, vicar from 1836 to 1886 and later Dean of Dromore. The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859 shows the house enlarged by the addition of a west wing, which parish records confirm was built in 1857. This addition housed a good-sized study opening by folding doors into the drawing room, with a bedroom and dressing room of corresponding size above. A gate lodge, now gone, was also added at this time. The buildings were then valued at £30, and the valuer described the house as a "very neat concern, nicely situated."

Jeffry Lefroy was the son of Thomas Langlois Lefroy (1776–1869), Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1852 to 1866. Thomas Langlois Lefroy was romantically linked in his youth to the novelist Jane Austen, and it has been suggested he could have been the model for the character of Mr Darcy. The Lefroy family museum is at Carrig Glas Manor, Longford. Jeffry Lefroy married Helena Trench in 1844, and two of their nine children wrote a privately circulated account of their memories of growing up at the glebe house, describing it as "a very small and unpretending house...it must have seemed a tiny home to our father and mother who had both been used all their lives to much roomier quarters."

In 1886 the house passed to the Reverend Henry William Lett, who later became Chancellor of Dromore. He was a noted antiquary and an authority on botany, particularly mosses, publishing The Fungi of Northern Ireland in 1885 as a supplement to the proceedings of the Belfast Field Club. He is recorded as resident in the 1901 census, and the 1911 census shows him living with his wife, adult daughter and three servants — young women from Cavan, Sligo and Wicklow employed as a cook, a parlour maid and a general domestic servant. Lett died in 1920 and received a lengthy obituary in the Irish Naturalist written by Robert Lloyd Praeger, Ireland's foremost field botanist, with whom Lett had collaborated on the Clare Island survey while in his seventies. Praeger noted Lett's many publications on mosses and hepatics, and drew attention to the bramble Rubus lettii, which bears his name. Subsequent incumbents were Thomas Martin, a native of Fivemiletown, followed by John William Applebe and Edward Burns.

The glebe house was sold in 1950 to Colonel James Dickson Ferguson OBE DL, a director of Thomas Ferguson & Co Ltd and Ballievey Bleaching Co Ltd, who restored the house as a private family home, replacing the rear return and refenestrating the rear elevation. The house was listed in 1977 and remains in the ownership of the Ferguson family.