71 Drumarkin Road, Rathfriland, Co. Down, BT34 5MD

71 Drumarkin Road is a long asymmetrical two-storey three-bay house built between 1833 and 1859, located at Tirkelly townland north-east of Rathfriland. The house retains significant external character and its original plan survives, though much internal fabric has been lost. It is a good example of its type within its original garden setting.

The building is rectangular on plan with a pitched natural slate roof topped with angled clay ridge tiles. Chimneystacks are ruled-and-lined cement rendered, positioned to the gables and to the party wall between the central and right bays. The eaves project with a rendered course supporting half-round cast iron rainwater goods. The walls are ruled-and-lined cement rendered with stepped quoins and no plinth, though the right bay has a slight batter.

The principal elevation faces west. The left and right bays each contain a window to both floors. The central bay is wider and features an entrance offset to the left with a window to the right; first floor openings are arranged above. The north gable is blank. Windows are timber sash to the principal elevation: 8/8 panes to the ground floor and 8/4 panes to the first floor, with painted masonry cills. Timber casements are fitted to the rear elevation, which has asymmetrical fenestration of various sizes; a modern glazed timber door serves the central bay right, and French doors serve the left bay. The south gable is blank.

The entrance door is a four-raised-and-fielded panelled timber door with bolection moulding and cast-iron door furniture. A segmental spoked transom surmounts it, all enclosed by a painted moulded masonry surround on plinth blocks and accessed by a granite step.

The house is aligned with the road and set back behind a small front garden. The site is bounded to the road by a roughcast boundary wall with a gravel path on axis with the front door, accessed by a wrought-iron pedestrian gate mounted on wide square piers with pyramidal stone caps. Alcoved entrance walls flank a short gravel drive on the right side of the house, terminated with square piers supporting reclaimed wrought-iron gates. A paved terrace extends to the rear with a garden enclosed by modern walls to the north.

Directly opposite, in separate ownership, stands a single-storey outbuilding with a pitched slate roof set gable to the road. Its walls are rubble stone with vestiges of lime render and cement rendering to the north side. A datestone on the gable wall is largely illegible but possibly reads 1796.

The house first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1859. Historical records show that in 1862 Henry Tufts resided at the property, which he rented from the Honourable Robert Meade, son of the 1st Earl of Clanwilliam. The house and its sole outbuilding were valued at £6. Tufts remained until 1885 when David Knox, a local farmer and grocer, took possession. In 1897 Knox let the western outbuilding to William J. Hewitt, who used it as a dwelling and was engaged in small-scale linen manufacturing. The 1901 census recorded Knox as a farmer with grown children assisting his farm work, whilst Hewitt, then 61, worked as a linen weaver with his daughter Agnes employed as a seamstress. Both dwellings were described as first-class in the census building return; the main house had eight rooms and the outbuilding dwelling seven. Knox's farmhouse included a stable, three cow houses, three piggeries, two fowl houses and a barn to the rear, whilst Hewitt's dwelling had a stable, cow house and small barn. By the 1911 census Knox had expanded his operations, acquiring a grocer's shop in the townland and erecting an additional cow house and boiling house. Hewitt vacated in 1919 when David Knox Junior took possession of the outbuilding. The entire site passed to David Knox Junior upon his father's death in 1925, and he continued to occupy both dwellings through 1929. The house was listed in 1977 and remains occupied. The former outbuilding-dwelling and the building constructed before 1976 have both fallen into disrepair, having lost their slate roofs.