Balleevy House, 11 Balleevy Road, Balleevy Td, Co Down, BT32 4LS

Balleevy House is a substantial and elegantly proportioned mid-Georgian country house, built around 1784 — a date believed to be carved within one of its rooms — on a secluded woodland site east of Banbridge, close to the River Bann. It is symmetrical in composition, three bays wide and arranged over four floors: an exposed basement, a principal ground floor (the piano nobile), a first floor, and a second floor. The listing covers the house, its outbuildings, and yard wall.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house is L-shaped on plan, with a double-height return to the rear. The roof is a double-pile hipped form covered in natural slate, with a half-hip only over the rear right bay, and angled clay ridge and hip tiles. Half-round cast iron gutters are carried on drive-in brackets over stone eaves. Two central rendered chimneystacks rise to the ridge. External walling is unpainted cement render throughout, without ornament.

Windows are 6/6 timber sliding sash with horns, set in plain reveals with masonry cills, and diminish in height towards the upper floors. The second floor has 3/3 sashes, and the basement has 3/6 sashes.

The principal elevation faces west and is symmetrically arranged with five windows across, centred on a classical doorcase painted white. The main floor is reached by nine sweeping stone steps with a slender wrought iron handrail. The doorcase frames a six-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings and brass door furniture. Above the door is a spiderweb fanlight contained within a broken-bed triangular pediment, supported on semi-engaged columns with double capitals that are squared with guttae over circular foliate ornament. It is unclear whether the ground level has been lowered at some point, but if so this has affected the historic proportions to some degree, while also being of interest as a historic development in its own right.

The north elevation is five windows wide to the upper floors. The piano nobile level has two windows to the left side; to the right side, light is provided by a timber-framed canted oriel containing five 4/4 sashes divided by panelled timber mullions. The basement to this elevation has a modern inserted door at its centre.

The rear elevation projects to the right side, which is abutted at basement and ground floor level by a double-height return with a hipped slate roof detailed to match the main house, and with a lean-to porch to the left cheek at basement level. The central bay is lit by a window to the half-landing at each floor level, and the first-floor landing window is round-headed. The right bay is lit to the second floor only. The return has irregular fenestration including a circular pivot window. The porch is accessed via a timber-sheeted door with a multi-light panel.

The south elevation is two windows wide, with 1/1 sash windows to the piano nobile. There is a glazed door at basement level to the left.

SETTING AND OUTBUILDINGS

The house sits in extensive wooded grounds, well concealed from the road with an open aspect over countryside towards Banbridge to the west. A gravel forecourt is reached by a long sweeping unpaved avenue bounded by woodland, with the River Bann forming the northern boundary.

To the rear, a courtyard is bounded on two sides by an L-shaped two-storey outbuilding of limewashed random rubblestone with a corrugated metal roof. Painted timber louvred openings and timber-sheeted doors face into the courtyard. The south elevation of this outbuilding, which faces an orchard and garden, is exposed rubble stone and is extended to the right by a secondary outbuilding enclosing a further yard to the rear. Windows to this elevation are metal-framed at ground floor and multi-paned timber at first floor, some of them brick-lined. The east elevation of the outbuilding range overlooks a secondary yard accessed through an open entry with a cobbled floor; it is of exposed rubble stone with vestiges of timber windows and doors. Internally, the roof of this range is supported on pegged timber trusses, and there are vestiges of timber animal stalls.

The site also contains the remains of other stone and brick outbuildings and later industrial structures. These include the low-level remains of a brick building screened by undergrowth, and the remains of a two-storey rubble stone flour mill (Industrial Heritage Record reference 0775300000) on the eastern fringe of the site. The rear yard is further bounded by a lime-rendered single-storey building with attic, of vernacular character, which has been altered and is considered of little interest. The rear yard is accessed from Balleevy Road through a modern gate on roughly dressed stone piers. Adjoining the site to the north, bounding the river, is the former bleach mill, now converted for residential use (Industrial Heritage Record reference 0314400000).

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Crawford family, local linen merchants and bleachers, are central to the history of this property. A bleach works and beetling mill are recorded on the site from the mid-18th century, with a Gilbert Crawford noted as occupant from at least 1763. The house itself is believed to have been built by Gilbert Crawford's son George, who constructed it in 1784. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs record that the L-shaped outbuilding to the north was originally a beetling mill belonging to the Crawford family.

The house first appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, shown as a square-shaped building beside the Bann and labelled "Balleevy House." The L-shaped outbuilding is also shown at this date, as is an additional outbuilding to the south-east, which has since been greatly expanded and altered. The Townland Valuation of around 1830 records the house and mill jointly valued at £47, occupied by George and Thomas Crawford.

By the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860 a rear extension had been added to the house, linking it to the outbuilding formerly standing to the south-east. This work increased the combined valuation of house and out offices to £60 in Griffith's Valuation of around 1862, when occupation had passed to Miss Olivia Crawford, widow of George Crawford, who owned the property outright and let a number of smaller properties in the townland to tenants. Olivia resided at Balleevy House with her brother-in-law Thomas Crawford and his wife Anne, both of whom died in the 1870s. There was a slight decrease in valuation to £55 in 1864, the reason for which was not recorded. Olivia Crawford continued to live at Balleevy House until her death in 1883, at which time she left her "land, houses, mills and premises" to her son George Crawford.

George Crawford remained at Balleevy House for nearly thirty years. The 1901 Census described it as a large first-class dwelling of 21 rooms, with a substantial range of farm buildings comprising two stables, a dairy, two barns, a boiling house, 14 cow houses and five calf houses. By the 1911 Census return only four cow houses and a single calf house were recorded, though this may reflect a reorganisation or an enumerator's error rather than a significant change, as the valuation of the site remained unchanged. George Crawford died in 1911, leaving the property to his wife Isabella, who continued to live there for another decade. By 1921 the house had passed to Frederick, Robert and Samuel McCaw, who are recorded as residing there together until the end of the Annual Revision records in 1929.

In 1808, George Crawford's daughter Catherine married John Lindsay of Tullyhenan House, uniting the two principal linen families of the area. This connection later produced the firm of Crawford and Lindsay, which merged with the Ballydown Weaving Company in 1822 and continued as one of Banbridge's most important textile companies until the decline of the industry following the First World War. Walter Crawford was in occupation at Balleevy House in 1817 but advertised the house for sale in 1827 intending to emigrate to Canada. Whether or not it sold at that time, it was back in Crawford family hands by the 1830s, when Walter's brothers George and Thomas were operating the Balleevy mill alongside their own mills in the townland of Ballydown.

In the early 1940s, Dr W. Haughton Crowe, a headmaster of Banbridge Academy, purchased the site. Balleevy House was listed in 1976 and continues to be used as a private dwelling.