Altafort, 62 Skeagh Road, Dromore, Banbridge, Co Down, BT25 2QB

Altafort is a symmetrical two-storey, three-bay detached Georgian farmhouse with outbuildings, built around 1830 and situated on an extensive rural site to the south of Skeagh Road, northwest of Kinallen, in the townland of Skeagh. It is a fine and well-preserved example of a prosperous middle-sized early 19th-century farmhouse in its original setting, with the majority of its historic fabric, detailing, outbuildings, and landscape surviving intact.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house is rectangular in plan with a lean-to extension to the rear. The roof is hipped, covered in natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles, and carried on projecting stone eaves fitted with cast-iron half-round rainwater goods. The chimneystacks are rendered and each carries four terracotta pots. The walls to the principal east elevation are painted in ruled-and-lined render; the remaining elevations are lime-rendered and whitened. Windows throughout are generally 6/6 timber-framed sliding sash without horns, set in limewashed brick reveals with projecting painted masonry sills.

The principal east elevation is three bays wide on each floor. At ground-floor centre is an elliptical-headed doorcase with a timber fanlight and a modern eight-panelled timber door, flanked by three-paned sidelights with panelled aprons. The entrance is reached by a flight of granite steps with a paved threshold fitted with a wrought-iron boot-scraper. The south elevation has two evenly spaced windows to both ground and first floor. The west elevation has a full-height lean-to extension to the right — a modern addition of no architectural interest — and, to centre, a segmental-headed stairwell window, with further windows to the ground and first floor on the left. The north elevation has two segmental-headed multi-paned windows at ground-floor level.

SETTING AND OUTBUILDINGS

The house stands in extensive grounds with panoramic views eastward over the surrounding farmland. The approach from the main road is framed by a curved, low lime-rendered and whitened boundary wall with coping stones topped by original cast-iron arrowhead railings. Three square gate piers with pointed granite caps mark the entrance, with an original cast-iron latch gate hung between the paired piers. A secondary set of squared gate piers with masonry caps bearing ball finials supports a pair of original cast-iron gates at the inner driveway. A curved driveway leads to a U-shaped farmyard with original rubble stone outbuildings and a 20th-century barn to the east. The double-height barn to the south of the yard has a modern timber cupola fitted with a clock and weathervane. The stable block to the west and northwest retains original glazing and timber-sheeted half-doors throughout. To the rear of the house is a walled garden with a paved pathway, accessed from the yard through an original wrought-iron gate. A rubble stone wall runs along the south gable of the house to the grounds at the front.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Altafort appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, confirming that the house and its U-shaped outbuildings were already in place by that date. In the 1830s, the property was the residence of William C. Heron Esquire, a local magistrate active in Dromore. The contemporary Townland Valuation assessed the house and its many out-offices at £23. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1861, the rateable value of the site had risen to £35, though no discernible physical change to the site was recorded on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859.

By 1861, Altafort had passed to William Heron's brother, Robert Heron, who resided at Ardigon House in Killyleagh and leased the site from the Earl Clanwilliam. Robert Heron died in 1876, having amassed a fortune of approximately £35,000, and in his will he left his mansion of Altafort to his nephew, William Cowan Heron, described as a businessman trading in Belfast. William Cowan Heron (c.1820–1917) was recorded as the occupant of Altafort until his death, though the census returns for 1901 and 1911 indicate that he frequently resided with his brother John Heron (c.1829–1917) at Maryfield in Holywood; both brothers were described as landed proprietors. During William Cowan Heron's absences from Altafort, the estate was managed by a land steward named William Ervine — a common arrangement for substantial landlords of the period. Ervine resided in a first-class dwelling of four rooms on the property owned by William Cowan Heron, though it is not known whether this was the main house or a smaller dwelling on the site. The 1911 census records that the farm's outbuildings at that time comprised six stables, two cow houses, a boiling house, a barn, and a store.

William Cowan Heron died on 7 June 1917, still residing at Maryfield in Holywood, leaving an estate of over £75,000. His brother John died the following month, leaving a fortune of £434,833 to his son Francis A. Heron. Following William Cowan Heron's death, occupation of Altafort passed to a Robert J. Poots, who was recorded in the 1918 Ulster Town Directory as a Dromore-based operator of wholesale and retail grocery, a funeral parlour, and a postal establishment, who also hired out motorcars. Whether this is the same Robert J. Poots who came into possession of Altafort around 1920 is not certain, though a Robert J. Poots continued to be recorded as occupant until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1929.

Altafort is historically significant as the home of William Cowan Heron, a locally important figure who made substantial contributions to Dromore and the surrounding area. He was responsible for the installation of Dromore's town clock in 1891 — a four-faced clock housed in the cupola of the Town Hall — for the renovation of Ballyvicknacally School and the erection of a new teacher's residence around 1880, and most notably for funding the construction of the Cowan Heron Hospital in the townland of Drumbroneth in 1900 entirely at his own expense, for the benefit of the people of Dromore and its neighbourhood. He continued to meet the costs of improvements and repairs to the hospital until his death in 1917.

The house was occupied by a Mr D. E. Kirk at the time of the First Survey in 1969, was listed in 1977, and continues to be in residential use.