Magherabeg Road, Banbridge, Dromore, Co Down, BT25 1RS

Magherabeg Road, Banbridge

A detached single-storey vernacular farmhouse built around 1800, located at the end of a lane to the west of Magherabeg Road in County Down. The building is rectangular on plan, facing north, with an incorporated byre to the east and a further rubblestone byre abutting the west gable.

The house is constructed of rubblestone walling rendered in lime. The original pitched thatch roof survives beneath a later covering of corrugated iron sheeting. A brick chimneystack is present, with plastic guttering on iron brackets at the redbrick eaves course. The front north elevation is four windows wide and features square-headed window openings with concrete sills and timber frames. A central gabled windbreaker entrance projection contains a square-headed door opening with an early twentieth-century glazed timber door. The rear elevation is five windows wide, largely boarded up. The byre to the west has a square-headed door opening with a timber sheeted door, whilst the east gable is blank. The western rubblestone byre, abutting the main structure, has a corrugated iron roof and two door openings.

The building sits on an elevated site and represents an example of the lobby-entry dwelling type, with the original plan form and early thatched roof structure of note.

The farmhouse first appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, depicted as an oblong building with a small outbuilding to its north-west (now demolished). It was not included in the contemporary Townland Valuations of the 1830s, as it was not valued at the minimum of £3 required for inclusion. Griffith's Valuation of 1861 valued the site at £1 10 shillings and recorded it as occupied by Samuel Gracey, a local farmer leasing from Robert Dickson. The 1901 Census noted James Gracey (aged 79, Methodist) as a farmer residing there with his wife Eliza and three daughters employed as hemstitchers; the census building return described it as a second-class dwelling of three rooms with a stable, two cow houses, a piggery and a barn. James Gracey died in 1905, leaving the farm to his widow. By 1911, the property had passed to Thomas J. Arlow (Presbyterian farmer), who occupied it with his wife Mary and four sons. The census of that year noted the farmhouse still possessed its thatched roof. Arlow purchased the farm from Robert Dickson's estate in 1919. The property was occupied by Robert L. Smith in 1928, recorded as the last occupant in the Annual Revisions which ended in 1930. A second outbuilding was constructed to the west of the farmhouse between 1903 and 1919-20 (first shown on the fourth edition Ordnance Survey maps) but was demolished in the mid-twentieth century. The original thatch roof now lies beneath the corrugated-iron replacement; field inspection has revealed remains of the original thatched roof structure inside the building. The farmhouse is currently vacant and in a state of disrepair.