Glenbanna House, 14 The Point Road, Gilford, Craigavon, Co. Down, BT63 6EA

Glenbanna House

Glenbanna House is an attractive mid-Victorian linen house, built around 1850 as a replacement for an earlier late 18th-century dwelling on the same site, with further remodelling around 1885. It stands on the east side of The Point Road in Lawrencetown, in the townland of Coose. The house is a good example of the smaller linen houses of the Bann Valley district, retaining largely intact architectural detailing and much of its original character, set within a substantial mature garden approached by a long tree-lined avenue.

Architecture and Plan

The house is a symmetrical three-bay, one-and-a-half-storey dormered double-pile building. It follows an L-shaped plan, comprising two adjoining rectangular blocks with single-storey canted bay windows to the north. A single-storey flat-roof extension lies to the rear. The roof is natural slate in an M-profile, with terracotta ridge tiles and two centrally placed smooth rendered chimneystacks. The gables have fretted bargeboards and finials. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods run on projecting eaves with decorative trefoil fascia and bargeboards. External walls are roughcast render on a chamfered plinth with quoins. Windows throughout are one-over-one timber sliding sash set in moulded architraves unless otherwise noted.

Principal (North) Elevation

The principal elevation faces north and is three openings wide to the first floor. Canted bay windows flank a central original panelled-and-glazed timber entrance door with side-lights having panelled timber aprons. The door is reached by a single stone step and fronted by an open timber portico with square piers, trefoil spandrels, and a quatrefoil lattice parapet above. Three wall-head dormers with decorative bargeboards and finials rise to the first floor.

East Elevation

The east elevation comprises two gabled bays. The left bay is slightly wider and contains two six-over-six sash windows to the first floor and two one-over-one sash windows to the ground floor. The right bay has a one-over-one sash window at first floor and a panelled-and-glazed double-leaf timber door with a transom light at ground floor, accessed by two bull-nosed steps and set in a moulded architrave.

South (Rear) Elevation

The south elevation is partially concealed. Three small timber casement windows are irregularly arranged at first floor level. The single-storey flat-roof return abuts the left side, with three one-over-one sash windows on its west elevation. A red-brick and timber greenhouse abuts this return to the south.

West Elevation

The west elevation also comprises two gabled bays. The right bay is set back slightly and contains two six-over-six sash windows to the first floor, an enlarged replacement window to the lower left, and a one-over-one sash window to the lower right. The left bay, which is slightly narrower, has a one-over-one sash window at first floor and a panelled-and-glazed double-leaf timber door with transom light at ground floor, accessed by two bull-nosed steps and set in a moulded architrave.

Setting

The house sits on a large, mature site opposite St Patrick's Catholic Church and south of the Point Bridge at The Point Road. It is reached via a long tarmacked avenue lined with giant beech trees, which Bassett's Directory of 1886 singled out as forming a beautiful bower fifty feet wide — these trees survive to this day. Formal gardens to the west are accessed through a round-arched cast-iron gate, with a wild meadow beyond. To the east of the house, a set of stone steps and a further round-arched cast-iron gate lead to a mature garden. The lane to the west is bounded by a rubble stone wall with curved entrance walls and castellated gate piers carrying replacement metal gates. The lane continues east past a modern single-storey garage and sweeps south to an equestrian courtyard. West of the courtyard entrance stands a two-storey stone barn with brick surrounds to its openings, top-hung timber casement windows, and a slate roof. The entrance pillars to the courtyard are modern and carry cast busts of horses. The stables, outbuildings, and carriage houses within the courtyard are of modern single-storey construction with monopitch corrugated fibre cement roofs and painted rendered walls, with the exception of a second stone barn to the west.

Historical Background

The site is recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 as a house on a rectangular plan with outbuildings arranged around a rear courtyard, captioned "Coose Vale" after the townland in which it stands. The original house was built by the Law family, sometime owners of the Gilford estates, who later sold their lands to Dunbar McMaster. The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 lists the property of Samuel Law, including a spinning manufactory, bleach mills, and offices, though it makes no mention of the dwelling house itself. By the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860 the house had been rebuilt or substantially remodelled. A notice in the Freeman's Journal of 1857 concerning the birth of a son to one William Law suggests the rebuilt house was known from that point onwards as Glenbanna rather than Coose Vale.

At the time of Griffith's Valuation (1856–64), the occupier was William Law, who leased the property from Samuel Law, by then living at nearby Hazelbank. The valuation records a two-storey house with both double and single-storey returns and a range of outbuildings including stables, a coach house, and a greenhouse, the buildings being valued at £30. Samuel Law died in 1867, and following a dispute over his will, Hazelbank factory, house, and Glenbanna were put up for sale. They were advertised in the Belfast Newsletter of 11 September 1879. In 1880 the property was taken over by Thomas Dickson and William Walker, a linen draper of Banbridge, who together established the Hazelbank Weaving Company. William James Dickson Walker moved into Glenbanna, and the 1885 Annual Revisions record that the house had been improved, its valuation being raised to £35.

W. J. D. Walker proved to be a remarkable figure beyond the linen trade. He became an organiser and inspector of industries for the Congested Districts Board, established in Ireland in 1891 to aid agriculture, forestry, and industry in the poorest areas of the country, principally the western counties. The Board was largely engaged in purchasing land from large estates for redistribution to smallholders. While working for the Board, Walker invented an improved hand-loom for wool weaving and placed his invention at the Board's disposal; the looms were supplied to weavers in the west of Ireland on a loan instalment system. He was also instrumental in establishing lace and crochet schools throughout the congested districts, with 245 pupils receiving small payments from the Board for their work. Walker was appointed an honorary member of the Board in 1910 and continued to serve until its dissolution in 1928. A Finance Committee of Dáil Éireann report of 9 June 1926 described him as a "very remarkable" man whose business knowledge and training had been essential to the "very considerable development" of rural industries during his tenure.

Walker was also a keen amateur photographer. In May 1896 the Belfast Newsletter reported an outing of the Ulster Amateur Photographic Society, travelling by train to Scarva and Lawrencetown under Walker's leadership. Photographs were taken in the grounds of Glenbanna, with village children posing as anglers. That afternoon, Walker gave at Glenbanna what was one of the earliest demonstrations in Ireland of the new technology of X-rays. X-rays had been discovered in late 1895 by W. C. Röntgen, who published his findings in December of that year and later received the first Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery. By the end of January 1896 the news had spread throughout the Western world and generated enormous public excitement. In Ireland, photographs were presented to the Royal Dublin Society in February 1896, and a demonstration of the technique was given at the Royal College of Science the following month. Walker's May demonstration was described in full in the Belfast Newsletter, which reported that he had brought the technique "to a marvellous state of perfection" through modifications enabling a number of people to view X-ray images on a screen, and that "many of the members availed of the opportunity of seeing the bones of their hands." Walker also took photographs during his work in the west of Ireland which are reproduced in Sir Henry Augustus Robinson's Further Memories of Irish Life (1924).

By 1911 Walker had left Glenbanna. Valuation records list William Forster Uprichard as occupier, while the 1911 census records his brother, 27-year-old Forster Green Uprichard, linen merchant, as the sole occupier. Subsequent residents included William Reid, a retired bank official who died in 1923, and James Brice Smyth of the well-known linen family, a factory manager — presumably of the Hazelbank Weaving Company — who died in 1930. From 1932 the house was home to Anna Maria Smyth.

The First General Revaluation of 1933–34 records Anna Maria Smyth in residence, with the house revalued at £35. The accommodation at that time comprised a hall, two reception rooms with bay windows at the front, a cloakroom, kitchen, pantry, scullery, larder, and a small room adjoining the larder used as a sewing room. Upstairs were two good front bedrooms, a dressing room over the hall, two back bedrooms (one large, one small), and a bathroom containing an encased bath, lavatory, and water closet, all described as old-fashioned fittings. The valuer noted it as "an old house (low 2 storeyed) in very fair condition but not modernised throughout," standing in approximately three and a half acres of well laid-out garden with agricultural land attached. The house remains in use as a private domestic dwelling.