Woodbank, 20 Moyallan Road, CRAIGAVON, Co Down, BT63 5JX

Woodbank is a detached Georgian house built around 1780, extended around 1880, and set within a large mature site west of Moyallan Road, north of Gilford, in the townland of Ballymacanallen. It is a good example of an earlier house extended and updated in Victorian times, and its development reflects the growth of the linen industry in the area. The gate lodge (listed separately) forms part of the group.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house follows a symmetrical three-bay, two-storey-over-semi-basement plan, rectangular in form, with full-height bowed bays. The roof is hipped natural slate with blue-black angled ridge tiles and rendered chimneystacks, each carrying seven tall terracotta pots. Cast-iron rainwater goods sit on an ovolo-moulded eaves course with cast-iron hoppers. The external walling is block-marked cement render with quoins and a corbel course between basement and ground floor. Windows throughout are uPVC replacements set in simple smooth rendered architraves with stone sills, unless otherwise noted. Despite the uPVC windows, the architectural detailing is largely intact and the building retains much of its external character and original composition.

The principal elevation faces northwest and is five openings wide at first floor and basement level. At its centre is a later Tuscan entrance porch with round-headed margin-paned timber sliding sash windows. The entrance door is eight-panelled timber with a transom light, set in a moulded architrave and reached by four enclosed sandstone steps; the porch has corner pilasters with an entablature. This central porch is flanked by two narrow 2/2 timber windows. The basement level is enclosed by a parapet wall with decorative painted railings. Ground-floor windows to the bow bays have dividing pilasters.

The northeast elevation has a bow bay to the right with three windows at first floor and a tripartite window at ground floor. To the left are two first-floor windows and a large window insertion at ground floor. The rear southeast elevation has two widely spaced first-floor windows and three windows in deep reveals at ground floor, abutted to the right by a single-storey entrance porch and to the left by the two-storey return and extension. On the northeast face of the rear range, a recessed bay to the right has a projecting entrance porch containing a modern half-panelled timber door, while a projecting bay to the left, which serves as a toilet block, has replacement fenestration. The extension has an entrance bay to the left with an original full-length timber panelled and glazed porch at ground floor containing a four-panelled timber door. The northwest elevation features a variety of fenestration including a segmental-arched window to the far left and two large multi-paned windows to the ground floor right. The southwest elevation has the bow bay to the left with three first-floor windows and a large plate glass window insertion at ground floor; to the right is a central window and a uPVC double-leaf door with transom light at ground floor, abutted by a modern uPVC conservatory to the southwest.

To the rear, the house is abutted by a two-storey L-shaped return and extension dating from around 1880, which houses a cloakroom and toilet and is also used as a separate dwelling (not accessed as part of this assessment).

SETTING AND OUTBUILDINGS

The house sits on a large mature site surrounded by farmland and bounded by mature trees, accessed from the east via a tree-lined driveway. The grounds are gravelled to the front and lawned on three sides, with a swimming pool to the rear. A paved yard at the rear of the house is enclosed by decorative cast-iron gates and railings. To the east is a tarmacadamed yard with an L-shaped block of two-storey smooth-rendered outbuildings with a tin roof — those to the east possibly with a Belfast roof truss — and a carriageway entrance to the right. The outbuildings have a variety of timber-sheeted doors and some timber casement windows. The setting and associated outbuildings contribute meaningfully to the historic interest of the building.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The site has an older origin: the Kennedy family, who were farmers and linen bleachers, built a house here in 1693. The Kennedys lived at Woodbank until 1791 when their lands — which included the plots on which Bannvale, Elmfield, and Woodbank now stand — were divided up and the leases sold.

The present house was built around 1780 by Abraham Atkinson, linen draper of Stramore, on the site of this earlier late 17th-century house. A survey of the townland of Ballymacanallen dating from 1800 shows a two-storey house without the bow ends present today, recorded as the property of Abraham. Atkinson died in 1809 and the house and lands passed to James Christy of Stramore, a partner in the Moyallon Vitriol Company. On Christy's death in 1820, the property passed to his daughter Mary Bell, who lived with her husband Abraham Bell in New York, where he ran a Quaker shipping and commission agency. The house appears to have been let to various tenants during this period, including William Dawson, a relative and business associate of the Christy family.

When Mary Bell died in 1832, her husband Abraham Bell inherited Woodbank. The tenant at this time was linen merchant Hugh Law. Law built a mill, now demolished, in the village of Gilford around 1830, but the venture was short-lived and the land was sold shortly afterwards to Dunbar McMaster, who built their own spinning mill on a plot further to the north. The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 records the occupier as Hugh Law, with the house and offices valued at £34 8s. Dimensions are given for the house and numerous outbuildings, including a lapping room — a large airy room lined with windows where bleached linen would be measured and folded into lengths before being taken to a linen hall for sale — and a mill house, suggesting there was a bleach mill on the site at this time.

The house appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, captioned as 'Wood Bank', on a roughly rectangular plan close to the River Bann, with outbuildings to the south and east and an uncaptioned gate lodge to the north. The surrounding open ground divided by rows of trees is likely to have been bleach greens. The second edition of 1858 shows changes to the plan form, including a more substantial rear return. By this edition, the gate lodge to the north had been replaced by one further south along the Moyallan Road.

The house and land were auctioned in 1861 and bought by James Dickson of the neighbouring Elmfield House for £2,500. Griffith's Valuation lists James Dickson as the occupier, though the valuer noted that Dickson's brother-in-law, John Blair, was actually living in the house, describing it as probably only a temporary arrangement. The valuation was initially recorded at £16, then raised to £25, and subsequently to £42, indicating remodelling and improvements at around this time, consistent with the c.1860 extension evident in the building fabric. Valuation records suggest the major remodelling took place around 1860 when the house was taken over by Dickson.

The house was subsequently let to a series of tenants: Richard Falkner in 1869, George G. Tyrrell, solicitor, in 1870, and in the mid-1870s to John George McMaster, brother of Hugh McMaster of Gilford Mill. Their younger brother, Henry Barnett McMaster, was also resident at this period. The rent was reported at £100 per year.

By 1881 the house had been purchased by Joseph Collen, a partner in the firm Collen Bros, building contractors, a firm still in existence and associated with significant Irish buildings including the main hall of the Royal Dublin Society, completed in 1884. Although some features of the house, including the gate lodge, are consistent with a construction date of around 1880, valuation records do not record any rises in valuation after Collen's purchase. From 1886 Collen began advertising the property in the Belfast Newsletter, describing it as a gentleman's residence of approximately 51 acres, 3 roods, and 27 perches, with the River Bann flowing along one side and the Moyallan Road on the other, held in perpetuity at a yearly rent of £12.

By 1892, Collen Brothers had let the house to St John Braddell, a retired and pensioned first clerk in the record and writ office at the Four Courts in Dublin, who was still in residence at the time of the 1901 census. Braddell was a native of Cork, living with his Waterford wife, two adult sons, and a staff of three young women from County Tyrone — a cook, a housemaid, and a kitchen maid. It is suggested that Collen may have met Braddell through the firm's engagement to build a new law library at the Four Courts, completed between 1894 and 1896.

By 1906 the house was again vacant. The 1911 census records the tenancy of William James Strain, farmer, who lived there with his wife, five young children, his mother-in-law, and three older farm labourers. Strain remained the tenant until 1921, when the house was taken over by David Huston.

Around 1930, the house was bought as a wedding present for Frederick Maynard Sinton, who unfortunately died in a car accident in 1936. His widow and children continued to live in the house. The Sintons are descendants of Thomas Sinton, founder of linen manufacturing firm Thomas Sinton and Co. Ltd of Tandragee, a firm active until the early 1990s. The house has since been extended to the rear and the kitchen modernised, and it remains in use as a dwelling.