5 Old Gilford Road, Portadown, Co. Armagh, BT63 5LS

5 Old Gilford Road, Portadown

A single storey, four bay, lobby entry thatched house with roughcast external wall finish, dating from the mid-18th century. The building faces north-east overlooking a strip of lawn and a low roughcast wall with concrete coping. It is positioned at the corner of a roadway forming part of a modern development, reached by a remnant of the Old Gilford Road which leaves the main road to Gilford in a southerly direction about one and a half miles from the centre of Portadown.

The thatched roof is contained within parapet gables, with three rows of exposed scollops at the ridge and one at the eaves. Each gable rises to a corbelled chimneystack, with a further stack positioned over the kitchen hearth. The roughcast walls have a deep projecting base at the front and a low projecting base at the rear. Plain cement dressings finish the projecting porch and the extremities of the façade. Window openings have plain surrounds eared at the top corners. The front elevation remains undecorated, whilst most of the remaining external finish has been whitened.

The projecting porch contains a four-panel door flanked by plain sidelights. The main façade features two plain sashed windows on either side of the porch, each with splayed sash stops and sills of intermediate depths. A small plain window set to the left of centre at a higher level in the north-west gable lights the loft, which is accessed by an internal hatch from the ceiling of the end bay. The left-hand gable is blank. A workshop with lean-to natural slate roof, roughcast wall finish and double timber sheeted door abuts the north-west gable.

A kitchen extension has been constructed at the rear, with roughcast and whitened walls, natural slate roof and light galvanised metal rainwater goods. The extension door is plain glazed at top and bottom. To the left of the extension there are four plain sashed windows with stops and sills of traditional depths: the first is of increased width, the second is of reduced size at approximately half the height of the others, and the last two are of proportions similar to those at the front of the building. To the right of the extension there is another plain sashed window of increased width.

The property appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1834–35. In the first valuation of 1836, it was recorded as occupied by either George Adamson and his brother or James Walker, comprising a very old slated dwelling of 52 feet by 19 by 12, an old thatched addition serving as a shop of 15 by 19 by 8, two very old thatched outbuildings of 38½ by 19 by 7½ and 14½ by 17 by 6, and three old sheds of 32 by 11 by 5, 32 by 14 by 7, and 30 by 19½ by 12 (the last slated), with a rateable value of £6–12–0. The revised Ordnance Survey map of 1860 shows a similar building, though the north-western end appears recessed and there is a small return to the rear; a free-standing structure set at an angle is shown to the north-west, with a smaller one to the south-west. The 1862 valuation records the occupier as Abraham Walker, with James Robinson as the immediate lessor and a rateable value of £8, though no building details are provided by the valuers. According to information supplied by the owner in 1986, the property was originally owned by a family named Jelly before coming into possession of the Mayes family in 1769, which may provide a good indicator of the building's age, as the valuers of 1836 certainly believed it to be of considerable antiquity at that date. John Rocque's map of 1760 shows a relatively dense collection of buildings along this road, though it is insufficiently accurate to confirm with certainty whether this house was among them.

The outbuildings were demolished sometime before 1986 to allow construction of a road into the estate. In 1990 the property underwent renovation with assistance from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. Re-thatching was carried out in 1999 using dam-retted flax, a process that may not prove long-lasting as it involves breaking down the outer coating.

The building retains its early layout, which has assimilated alterations in an acceptable manner. The accessible part of the roof remains substantially intact apart from strengthening timbers. The listing extends to the house, three gate pillars and walling.