9 Derryloughan Road, The Diamond, Loughgall, Co. Armagh, BT61 8PH

9 Derryloughan Road, The Diamond, Loughgall, County Armagh

This is a single-storey, four-bay, lobby-entry thatched house dating from around 1720, with harled and whitened mud walls. It sits a short distance to the west of the Diamond crossroads, reached by turning south off the Portadown to Moy road approximately four miles from the outskirts of Portadown, then travelling a further mile to the Diamond. The house faces south-west, overlooking a forecourt.

The roof was originally thatched, then covered at some point with corrugated iron over the remains of the original thatch. In 2000, the corrugated iron was removed and the house was re-thatched by Gerry Agnew using Devon combed wheat straw. Austrian straw had earlier been used in a late 1990s restoration, local straw having too high a nitrogen content to ensure adequate durability. The removal of corrugated iron and re-thatching of this house and the nearby 1 Derryloughan Road was the first operation of its kind, and both properties were intended to serve as models for the treatment of similar "thatch over tin" (TUT) buildings in the future.

The front elevation features a foursquare porch with a timber-sheeted half door and a serrated fascia, matched by a serrated bargeboard decorating the porch's pitched roof. To the left of the porch there is one vertically sliding sash window, and to the right there are three, each sash divided into two horizontally with small sash stops. All openings are dressed with plain cement surrounds and have sills of traditional depth. The right-hand south-east gable rises to a corbelled chimneystack, and there is a further stack positioned above the kitchen hearth. There are no chimney pots.

At the rear, an extension entered from the kitchen has a wall surface similar to the main house and is roofed with corrugated iron. To the left of the extension are two vertically sliding sash windows with small sash stops and sills of intermediate depth, but without surrounds. The first of these is of reduced dimensions, with the upper sash divided into two horizontally and the lower sash plain and equal in size to one of the upper panes. The second window is similar to those on the front elevation. To the right of the extension are three windows matching the smaller light on the opposite side. The building extends further to the right as an outbuilding with a rendered wall finish and a pitched natural slate roof. Abutting the opposite gable is a pair of toilets, finished to match the house, also with a pitched natural slate roof. Further outbuildings extend towards the road, forming one side of the forecourt.

Internally, the layout retains all of its original elements, including the lobby entry, the central doorway leading from the kitchen to a corridor, and — a rare surviving feature — rooms on either side of that corridor. Interior detailing is intact throughout.

The roof structure is of particular significance. Dendrochronological tests carried out by Queen's University Belfast in 2000 established that the oak used to form it was felled between 1703 and 1721, with the most precise estimate placing the felling date at AD 1712 plus or minus nine years. This makes the house almost certainly one of the last buildings in Ireland or Britain to use oak as its primary structural timber, since after around 1720 Scots pine imported from Scandinavia and America became the dominant building material.

A house is shown on this site on the first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834–35, along with a range of outbuildings extending towards the road. By the time of the revised map of 1862 the house is shown in elongated form and the outbuilding is shorter. The house also appears on John Rocque's 1760 map of County Armagh. In the second valuation of 1862 it is recorded as the home of Daniel Winter, who was leasing the property from the Cope Estate, with a rateable value of £2. At the time of Griffith's valuation of 1860 the annual valuation was £10 10s 0d, the map reference was OS 48 No. 37, the landlord was Blayney T. Balfour, and the holding measured 10 acres, 2 rods, and 25 perches. The property also appeared in the Tithe Books compiled in 1830. The first mention of the Winter family appears in Quaker records dated 1665.

It is not entirely certain whether the house was built by the Winter family. George Henry Bassett, writing in 1888 after apparently speaking with the then occupants, the Misses Jane and Margaret Winter, seems to suggest the family acquired the property in 1788. What is accepted, however, is that the house was in the possession of the Winter family at the time of the Battle of the Diamond in 1795. Following the skirmish between the Protestant "Peep o'Day Boys" and the Catholic "Defenders," a number of the victorious Peep o'Day Boys met either in this house or in a nearby inn belonging to Dan Winter, a relation, and resolved to form what became the Orange Order. The house is therefore of considerable historical importance at both local and international level.