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

These are a group of traditionally constructed stone outbuildings dating from the 19th century, located to the rear of Aghaderg Glebe, a former rectory to St Mellan's Parish Church, Loughbrickland, later associated with local industrialists. The outbuildings are well preserved, retaining much of their historic fabric and character, and represent a good example of ancillary estate buildings that illustrate the range of activities associated with a significant house. The listing extends to the outbuildings themselves, together with the surrounding walls, piers and gates.

The group is dispersed around a courtyard behind the main house and comprises a two-storey stable block with a single-storey store bounding the east side of the courtyard, a byre to the north, and a coach house to the north-west. All buildings have pitched natural slate roofs and are constructed of rubble stone laid to rough courses, with roughly cut granite quoins and brick dressings to openings. All openings are timber-sheeted.

The stable block, to the east of the courtyard, has a loft above and gable chimneys. Its yard-facing (north-west) elevation features a large segmental-arched vehicular opening to the left; to the right of centre and at the far right are timber-sheeted doors set on granite plinth blocks, with the door right of centre flanked by 20-pane fixed windows with granite sills. All ground floor openings have segmental brick relieving arches. At loft level there is a 12-pane window above the vehicular opening, a door to the far right, and a louvred loading door offset to the right of centre, flanked by ventilation slits. The north-east gable has a first-floor loading door accessed by a set of external stone steps. The rear (south-east) elevation has a 12-pane window to the right and two ventilation slits at first-floor level to the centre, abutted at ground floor by a lean-to woodshed, the right bay of which is roofless. The south-east face of this lean-to comprises a single square-headed door opening (without a door) to the roofless bay, four large square-headed openings with a continuous timber lintel — the left two of these divided by a round timber post — a blank left cheek, and a right cheek with a single bricked-up window opening whose sill remains. The south-west gable has a 20-pane window at ground floor level, with the remainder blank.

To the right of the stable block, separated by an entry with a metal gate, is a cart house detailed in the same manner as the stable block. It has a 20-pane window to the right and square-headed vehicle doors to the left. A partially engaged circular pier abuts the south-west gable to the left. There are blocked-up, brick-dressed segmental-arched openings at the apex of both the north-east and south-west gables. The rear south-east face is abutted by a slate-roofed lean-to, the exposed section of which is blank. The south-east face of the lean-to is blank; the left cheek has a timber-sheeted door to the left and a small four-pane window to the right. The right cheek was not viewed.

Further to the north, set within the rear lawn, is a byre with an attached store. Its south-west elevation has two segmental-arched vehicle doors to the right of centre. The north-west gable has two semi-circular-arched openings: that to the left has a timber-sheeted door and that to the right is brick-infilled. The rear (north-east) elevation has three equally spaced square-headed metal casement windows. The south-east gable was not viewed.

The coach house is to the north of the site, accessed by a tarmac drive to the west of the house. It has segmental-arched double doors to the south-west gable. The south-east elevation comprises a square-headed timber-sheeted half door left of centre with brick dressings and a relieving arch. The rear (north-east) gable is blank and the north-west elevation was not viewed. A metal gate is attached to the south-east, alongside a square rubble-stone pier with brick dressings and a pyramidal top. Rainwater goods are cast iron throughout.

The setting is an important part of the group's character. The main house lies to the south. The sloping tarmac courtyard to the rear is fully enclosed by a rubble stone wall and accessed from the north through a pair of timber gates supported by square piers with brick quoins and pyramidal caps inset with granite pebbles. The west entrance retains its piers only. Extensive gardens to the west, south and east are generally laid to lawn with mature trees and shrubs, within a woodland setting with a burn to the east side. A tarmac forecourt, accessed by a lane from the public road to the west, is entered through a pair of metal gates on square granite piers with pyramidal caps. The entrance wall is alcoved with a soldier coping.

The history of the outbuildings can be traced through 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps and valuation records. A building is shown on the site of the two-storey stable on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, but valuation records indicate that this was originally a single-storey, thatched structure, which had been rebuilt as a two-storey building by the time of Griffith's Valuation of around 1860. The contemporary Ordnance Survey map suggests that the single-storey lean-to to the rear and the cart house to the south had also been added by this date, although it is possible that the lean-to was in fact the original building on the site. A building is also shown on the site of the store on the first edition map of 1833, while the byre appears for the first time on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1902–3, indicating it dates from the second half of the 19th century.

The glebe house itself was built at the turn of the 19th century. Samuel Lewis, writing in 1837, describes it as a handsome residence, noting that the Board of First Fruits gave £100 towards its erection in 1801 and also purchased a glebe of 24 acres for the vicar. The house was built for Joseph McCormick, son of a Newry merchant, who became vicar in 1798. It subsequently passed to Dominick Edward Blake of County Galway in 1814 and then to James Saurin — later Archdeacon of Dromore and son of the Bishop of Dromore — in 1823. The next incumbent, from 1826, was Edward Richards, the previous vicar's brother-in-law, having married James Saurin's sister in 1824. Reverend Edward Richards is listed as the occupier in the Townland Valuation of 1828–40, which records dimensions for the house, its return and basement, and three outbuildings, one of which is thatched. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 shows the glebe house captioned as a rectangular building with a return and a number of outbuildings to the rear, with the buildings valued at £17.

At 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 wing to the west, and the parish history records that this addition, built in 1857, housed a good-sized study with a bedroom and dressing room of corresponding size above, with the study opening by folding doors into the drawing room. A gate lodge, now gone, had also been added by this time. The buildings are valued at £30, with the valuer commenting that the house is a very neat concern, nicely situated. Dimensions are recorded for the house and a two-storey outbuilding.

Jeffry Lefroy was the son of Thomas Langlois Lefroy (1776–1869), Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1852 to 1866, and the father of George, who became Bishop of Lahore and Metropolitan of India. Thomas Langlois Lefroy was romantically linked in his youth to the novelist Jane Austen, and the suggestion has been made that 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 book for private circulation about their memories of growing up at the glebe house, describing it as a very small and unpretending house that must have seemed a tiny home to their father and mother, who had both been used all their lives to much roomier quarters.

In 1886 the house passed to Reverend Henry William Lett, who later became Chancellor of Dromore. He was a noted antiquary and an authority on botany, especially mosses, and published The Fungi of Northern Ireland in 1885 as a supplement to the proceedings of the Belfast Field Club. He was resident in 1901, though the census return for the glebe is missing for that year. The 1911 census shows him resident with his wife and adult daughter, together with three servants — young women from Cavan, Sligo and Wicklow employed as cook, parlour maid and general domestic servant. Henry William Lett died in 1920, and a lengthy obituary appeared 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 highlighted Lett's many publications on mosses and hepatics and noted that a bramble, Rubus Lettii, bears his name, describing him as a thorough field naturalist, with that eye for likely country that only comes with experience, and seldom comes fully to any but the country-bred.

Lett was followed by Thomas Martin, a native of Fivemiletown, then 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.