16 Ballymore Road, Banbridge, Co Down, BT32 3PG

16 Ballymore Road, Banbridge

A single-storey three-bay vernacular hearth-lobby dwelling dating to before 1834, representing an early traditional farmhouse with surviving rural setting features. The building is situated in an adjacent field east of 17 Ballymore Road, approximately 4 miles south of Banbridge, on an elevated site with no direct access and largely screened from view.

The house adopts a rectangular linear plan form with an attached outbuilding and windbreaker porch. The structure is built of rubble masonry with lime render, topped with pitched corrugated-iron roofing, corrugated ridging, and cement skews. A brick chimneystack serves the building, and there are no rainwater goods.

The principal elevation faces west and is asymmetrical in arrangement. A projecting catslide windbreaker porch containing a painted timber-sheeted front door with exposed timber frame stands right of centre. To the left of the porch are two 2/2 sliding-sash windows with vertical glazing bars and horns; a single similar window appears to the right. The left gable is blank. The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged with a projected outshot extending from the right bay, which features a central steel-framed timber casement window with a horizontal glazing bar. The right gable is abutted by a corrugated-iron roofed rubble masonry outbuilding with lower ridge and eaves levels, partially built up in concrete block to its west elevation. The sash windows throughout have no cills.

A building corresponding to the present structure appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 and the second edition of 1860, though additions have been made to the building length more recently. During Griffith's Valuation of 1858–64, John Sterritt was the tenant farmer, working approximately 7 acres. The farm house and outbuildings were leased from the Earl of Clanwilliam at an annual rent of £7 15 shillings, with the property valued at £1 5 shillings. The farm remained with the Sterritt family: at the 1901 census, John Sterritt, aged 82, lived there with his wife Mary and three adult children, together with a ten-year-old boarder named John Bell. At this period the two-room house with three windows was thatched. By 1911 his younger son Archibald had taken over the farm and was living there with his wife and infant daughter. By then the house had been re-roofed with corrugated iron. In the 1930s Mary Sterritt was the occupier. First General Revaluation notes from 1933–34 record a plan showing an attached store and calf house, with a separate corrugated-iron outbuilding (still present); the house and calf house were roofed in corrugated iron, while the store had a felt roof.

The building is set within a dry stone wall enclosing the western and southern boundaries, with a wrought-iron gate set into a tree. A rubble masonry well stands at the south boundary, and a privy is located at the northwest corner of the site. The house is currently derelict and has not been lived in for some years.