Moyallon House, 136 Stramore Road, Moyallen, Portadown, CRAIGAVON, BT63 5JZ

Moyallon House is a substantial two-storey-over-semi-basement detached house with an attic, built in 1795 and radically remodelled around 1860 to designs by John Grubb Richardson. It sits within extensive mature grounds to the north side of Stramore Road, north of Gilford town centre.

The house is rectangular on plan, with a symmetrical three-bay principal elevation facing east. A two-storey side wing, added around 1860, projects to the south, and a single-storey canted bay projects to the north. The hipped natural slate roof carries rendered chimneystacks with moulded caps and tall decorative pots, and three barrel dormers. A moulded eaves cornice is surmounted by a parapet, which is raised to the north and south and contains two attic windows at each end.

The walling is band-rusticated render to the ground floor and painted smooth render to the first floor, with raised quoins and a plat-band running between the floors and again beneath the eaves. Windows throughout are 2/2 timber sliding sash in segmental-arched lugged surrounds at first-floor level, and tripartite timber sliding sash in lugged surrounds with panelled aprons at ground-floor level, all with projecting painted sills.

The principal east elevation is raised on a stepped plinth with a metal grille over the basement. At its centre, the ground-floor entrance is framed by an engaged portico with paired Ionic columns and swag-moulding to the fascia, with triglyphs and circular motifs to the frieze. The doorcase contains a raised-and-fielded eight-panel timber door with brass door furniture, surmounted by a large timber fanlight with looped glazing.

The south elevation has two diminutive attic windows and is abutted by the L-shaped two-storey side wing of around 1860, which is styled to match the main house and fitted with cast-iron ogee rainwater goods on bracketed eaves. The south face of this wing has two barrel dormers to the attic. At first-floor level there is a group of three round-arched 1/1 windows in moulded surrounds with projecting sills and corbels beneath, the central window with a keyblock. At ground-floor level to the right is a tripartite segmental-arched window with dividing pilasters surmounted by a plain entablature. The basement is accessed via steps with smooth rendered parapet walls and has a half-panelled and glazed timber door. To the left of the south face is a round-headed geometric window at mid-level in a moulded surround with keyblock and projecting sill on corbels, and a four-panelled timber door to the ground floor in a moulded architrave. The west elevation of the south wing has a bowed bay left of centre with tripartite windows at both ground and first floor, and a window at each floor in the flanking bays.

The west elevation of the main house has a central pedimented breakfront two windows wide at each floor, flanked on either side by a single window at ground and first floor. The basement has two windows to the right and a window with a four-panelled timber door to the left. A cast-iron walkway runs at ground-floor level above the basement, supported on cast-iron columns and accessed by steps at the centre and stone steps at the north end, the latter with a cast-iron balustrade.

The east elevation has a projecting bay to the right with a window at each floor. The left bay is three windows wide at first floor; the ground floor has a window to the right and is abutted to the left by a flat-roofed extension two windows wide. The north elevation has two diminutive attic windows, two first-floor windows, a ground-floor window opening to the left that has been altered and partially filled and now contains a timber casement to the upper half, and the canted bay to the right with a metal grille over the basement.

The house is set within extensive mature grounds, surrounded by mature trees and approached via a gravelled avenue from the south. Concrete steps with a modern handrail to the north lead down to the rear garden. To the south is a single-storey gabled gardener's house abutting the east wall of the side wing, with bargeboards and finials to the gables. A paved courtyard to the south is partially enclosed by tall roughcast rendered walls and leads to the stable yard and associated outbuildings. The stable yard and gate lodges are all separately listed, and together with the house form a cohesive group that adds significantly to its historic interest.

Moyallon House has a long and well-documented history rooted in the Quaker linen trade of the Bann Valley. The townland of Moyallon was settled in 1675 by the Christy family from Scotland, who are thought to have introduced the linen trade to the area. A group of closely related Quaker families subsequently settled along the Bann between Moyallon and Lawrencetown, building mansion houses that reflected their growing prosperity from linen manufacture and trade. A house is known to have existed on the site by 1781, when the nearby Friends Meeting House was built. The meeting house trust deed of that year recorded the gift by Thomas Christy of a right of way from his gates to the meeting house, a route that continues to provide access to this day.

The present house was built in 1794 by Thomas Christy Wakefield (1772–1861), a descendant of the original Christy family and of Joseph Wakefield, owner of Moyallon bleach green. Thomas Christy Wakefield had previously lived in another house nearby, also called Moyallon House, which had been destroyed by fire. The house appears as "Moyallan" on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, which shows the main house and the service courtyard to the south that still survives. The Townland Valuation of 1826–40 records it as the property of Mr Thomas Wakefield, comprising a mansion house with cellars valued at £40 7s, with dimensions of 49 by 38 by 27 feet, together with a number of single- and two-storey outbuildings including a turf house, potato house, stables and lofts, a coach house, cow house and privy.

By the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 the house is designated "Moyallan Ho[use]" and a threshing machine is also shown within its curtilage. Griffith's Valuation records that ownership had by then passed to John Grubb Richardson. In August 1863 the valuation of the buildings was raised from £55 to £100 because the dwelling house was being rebuilt, enlarged, and new wings added to it, with new offices and gate lodges in progress. The third edition map of 1901–2 shows the completed new house with gate lodges and additional outbuildings. The architect of the remodelling is unknown, though the Quaker architect Thomas Jackson, who designed meeting houses in Belfast and Lisburn and was well known to the Richardsons, is thought to have been responsible for the gate lodges.

John Grubb Richardson was a descendant of the Richardsons of Lisnagarvey, among the earliest plantation settlers in the area, recorded there in 1610. Many generations of the family were involved in the making and marketing of linen, initially in Glenmore, Lambeg, and eventually in Liverpool, Philadelphia, New York, and the model village of Bessbrook. John Grubb Richardson was one of seven sons of James Nicholson Richardson, founder of the company J.N. Richardson, Sons & Owden Ltd, a successful bleaching and warehousing firm. Richardson purchased from Lord Charlemont the Mount Caulfield estate in Armagh, where his cousins the Nicholsons had already established a spinning mill, and from 1845 built a model village at Bessbrook around spinning mills and eventually weaving factories, with houses, a school, churches, and a shop, but no access to alcohol in keeping with Quaker temperance principles. In 1853 Richardson married Jane Marion Wakefield of Moyallon House, and the property passed to the couple on the death of her father. In 1863 Richardson inherited an estate in County Tyrone, and it appears to have been the sale of this estate that enabled him both to become sole owner of the Bessbrook works and village and to extend Moyallon House. A further gate lodge and a gas works were added to the estate in 1871, increasing the valuation to £140. John Grubb Richardson died in 1890, leaving his widow in residence until her own death in 1909, when the house passed to their son Thomas Wakefield Richardson.

The 1901 census records Thomas Wakefield Richardson living at the house with his English wife, a cook, and a Quaker housemaid. By 1911 he and his wife were absent but their household staff had grown to include a cook, lady's maid, housemaid, kitchen maid, and parlourmaid. When the gas works was demolished in 1910 the valuation was reduced to £125. The house passed to Richardson's widow Hilda after his death, and as the couple had no children, it became in 1945 the property of their nephew Alexander Reginald Wakefield Richardson.

The First General Revaluation of 1933–4 valued the house at £118. At that time the ground floor accommodation comprised a dining room, drawing room, library, morning room, flower room, cloakroom, billiards room, bedroom, butler's pantry, servants' hall, scullery, two kitchens, a servants' bedroom, two cloakrooms, a bootroom, three pantries, and a larder. The first floor contained seven bedrooms, a sitting room, a bathroom with hot and cold water, and a WC. The second floor held six servants' bedrooms, a bathroom, and a boxroom. The outbuildings at this time comprised a glass-walled museum (now gone), a laundry with drying room and loft containing three servants' bedrooms, three steam-heated greenhouses, stabling, four motor houses (one with two rooms over), stores, and agricultural buildings. The house had its own electric light, and the grounds included two grass tennis courts and a croquet lawn.

In the 1940s Alexander Richardson and his wife Marianne suffered the deaths of two of their four children from typhoid, followed by the death of a third child a few years later. Because of these tragic associations, the family moved to a nearby Richardson property called The Grange. The furniture in the now vacant Moyallon House was auctioned off and the premises was leased to the Department of Health and Social Services as a residential special care school, as shown on the Ordnance Survey map of the 1960s and 1970s. During this period a fine marble fireplace was removed and installed at Derrymore House, Bessbrook, a property that had been donated to the National Trust by the Richardsons. In the 1970s the house was occupied by a Mrs Mathers as a guest house, after which it stood vacant for some years before being renovated as a family home in the early 1980s.

From the earliest period to the present day there has been a remarkable continuity of ownership descending from the Christy family who first built on the site. The south wing of the house is now called The Lodge; in the 1990s it was converted into three self-contained flats by architect William C. Callaghan of Portadown. As part of this work, a verandah of wood and glass visible in early survey photographs was removed and replaced by the present single-storey flat-roofed extension.

Moyallon House is a fine and largely intact example of a Victorian developed country house, and stands as a direct expression of the prosperity generated by the linen industry in this part of Ulster during the 19th century.