Huntly House, 107 Huntly Road, Drumnagally, Banbridge, County Down, BT32 3BS

Huntly House

Huntly House is a substantial detached stucco villa built around 1850 to designs by Thomas Jackson, a prominent architect much favoured by the linen merchants of the Banbridge district. It stands on the east side of Huntly Road, north of Banbridge town centre, and is a confident example of Victorian domestic architecture, notable for its fine surviving detailing, symmetrical composition, and rich historical associations with the Ulster linen industry.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The main house is two storeys tall, three bays wide, and built to a symmetrical plan. The walling is painted ruled-and-lined render with an ashlar granite plinth and raised quoins. The hipped roof is clad in natural slate with leaded hips and ridges, and the rendered chimneystacks are finished with moulded caps and tall terracotta pots. Cast-iron ogee rainwater goods are carried on bracketed and modillion eaves with decorated fascias. Windows throughout are timber-framed 6/6 sliding sash in moulded architraves with painted masonry sills; those at ground-floor level have dentilled cornice hoods.

The principal, north-facing elevation is five openings wide at each floor. Its central feature is a tetrastyle Ionic portico with pilaster responds, flanking an eight-panelled timber door fitted with bead muntin and brass door furniture, set on a paved stone pedestal. Above the door is a transom light with glazing bars, and the doorcase is flanked by sidelights. The east elevation is two windows wide at each floor.

To the rear, the south elevation is abutted on the right by a two-storey return and on the left by a stair-hall extension. The stair-hall extension has two 2/2 windows with stained-glass margin panes set at different levels to the first floor, and a modern conservatory at ground-floor level (of no special interest). The return has two windows to the first floor on its south side and is abutted at ground-floor level by a further modern extension (also of no special interest). The west elevation of the main house has four windows to the first floor; at ground-floor right there is a window and a modern double-leaf glazed timber door in a moulded surround; the modern conservatory abuts at the re-entrant angle. A two-storey side wing to the west has a lower ridge level and is four openings wide on both its north and south elevations; a single-storey boiler house abuts it to the west. The east elevation is six windows wide to the first floor; at ground-floor centre a single-storey projecting porch opens to the south, with a six-panelled timber door and transom light, and a 6/6 window to the cheeks.

Good Victorian detailing survives throughout, including fine examples of 19th-century plasterwork in the interior.

SETTING

The house sits on a large site enclosed by a variety of mature trees. To the west is a walled garden with formal hedges, accessed from the northwest through an original cast-iron latch gate. A paved driveway to the north leads to a gravelled concourse, with terraced lawns to front and rear. Garden features include steps and a decorative balustrade to the west and a 19th-century sundial in the rear garden. The entrance is marked by original polygonal gate piers with caps supporting arrow-head gates and railing, with carriage bollards to the front.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

A house captioned "Huntly Glen" appears on the first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, along with outbuildings forming a stable courtyard to the rear and, in a tree-lined field to the north, a "Thread Manufactory." The earlier house on the site is said to have dated from 1760, and leases held by the present occupier indicate that the Dunbar family owned the property from at least 1785.

The house was built by Hugh Dunbar, proprietor of the Dunbar McMaster spinning mill at Gilford. Hugh Dunbar began spinning thread at Huntly in 1810, establishing one of the earliest thread manufacturing concerns in the Banbridge district. Yarn was boiled, sorted and prepared on his own premises before being wound and woven into cloth by local hand-loom weavers, some 1,700 of whom were employed in the neighbourhood. In 1834 the combined production of thread by Dunbar, William Stewart of Edenderry, and Brice Smyth of Brookfield was 900,000 hanks. However, competition from mill-spun yarns produced by the new wet-spinning process forced Dunbar to establish a spinning mill of his own at Gilford. Dunbar and Thompson's mill — later Dunbar McMaster and Company — opened there in 1839. Thread continued to be made at Huntly until 1843, shortly before Dunbar's death. The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 lists Hugh Dunbar as the occupier of the house, offices and thread factory, valued at £44 8s, and gives dimensions for the earlier house, a single-storey return, the separate thread factory, and outbuildings including a drying house and drying lofts, a workshop, and a boiling house.

The second-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1860 shows that the house had been remodelled, that gardens had been laid out before it, and that a gate lodge had been added to the entrance driveway. Map evidence and valuation records together suggest that the new mansion and service wing were built at right angles to the older dwelling, replacing some of the outbuildings and incorporating the earlier house as a return. The property is still captioned "Huntly Glen" in 1860 but is thereafter known simply as "Huntly." Both the early Victorian mansion and the gate lodge are attributed to Thomas Jackson. The gate lodge has since been demolished; a description and photograph of it appeared in Dean's gazetteer of Ulster gate lodges.

Hugh Dunbar moved to Dunbarton House in Gilford around 1845, leaving his four sisters at Huntly. When Hugh died in 1847, his sisters Anne and then Jane took over his position in the business partnership. In 1855, J. W. McMaster agreed to buy the lands, mills and machinery at Gilford from the Dunbar sisters for £35,000 and to buy out their share in the partnership, though it was not until 1865 that Jane formally assigned the family's interest to McMaster. Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 lists the house as the property of Miss Anne Dunbar, revalued at £70. The valuer describes the house as plastered and stone-finished with cut-stone quoins, and gives dimensions for the "new house," the "old house," and a number of returns, outbuildings, a glasshouse, and a gatehouse. The property stood in over 48 acres of land.

When Anne Dunbar died, the house passed to her sisters Isabella and Jane. Isabella owned most of the Dunbar property in Drumnagally and died with a fortune of £70,000. With Isabella's death in 1871 and Jane's in 1874, the house passed out of Dunbar family ownership after a period of at least a hundred years. The Dunbar sisters left a considerable sum of money to the Unitarian church in Downshire Road, Banbridge, for the establishment of a non-sectarian school-house — under the control of the Unitarian minister and church committee — known as the Dunbar Memorial School.

Jane Dunbar left Huntly in her will to her friend Mrs Anne Herron, who is recorded in valuation records as the occupier in 1874. Mrs Herron almost immediately offered the house for sale at auction. An advertisement in the Belfast Newsletter described it as "well built and planned, and in every respect a first-class one," containing four reception rooms, eight bedrooms, two dressing rooms, a lady's pantry, a housekeeper's pantry, water closet and servants' apartments. The offices comprised a coach house, stabling for eight horses, harness room, cow houses and more. The advertisement noted that the property lay within half a mile of Banbridge, with hunting in the immediate neighbourhood and good trout fishing in the River Bann, which formed the eastern boundary of the lands. The property is also adjacent to the ford of the Bann where William III crossed the river on his way to the Boyne in 1690.

John Morton bought the house in 1875. The 1901 census records him as a 64-year-old provision merchant living there with his wife, adult daughter, and two domestic servants. He died in 1902; his will shows that he traded as J. and J. Morton, as a bacon curer also selling provisions, seeds and oats. The Morton family had leased land on the Downshire estates from at least the 1750s. John's brother traded with him in Newry Street, with J. and J. Morton eventually being taken over by Messrs Sinclair of Newry. Their younger brother Joseph Morton ran his own ryegrass seed business, which continues to trade in agricultural supplies today.

John Morton's widow Mary took over the house after his death in 1902 but had left by 1911, when the house was taken over by D. Wilson Smyth. David Wilson Smyth was the great-grandson of Brice Smyth of Brookfield, and was for many years a Director of the family firm Smyth's Weaving Company Limited. He later became a Director of the Belfast Ropeworks Company Limited and was involved with the Northern Ireland Transport Board and its successor the Ulster Transport Authority, becoming Vice-Chairman in later life. He was a keen golfer and won the Irish Open Amateur Championship in 1921, but in 1922 the family moved to Belfast and Huntly House was again left vacant.

The house was bought in 1929 by Richard James Hale for £1,800, revalued after appeal at £39. A plan and dimensions from this period show the old and new houses, the service wing to the west of the main house, and single- and double-storey stables. Richard James Hale was a horse breeder and dealer, though his family traded in bacon, poultry and beef; a photograph survives of their Bridge Street premises dating from 1895, associated with the slogan "bacon is the backbone of our business."

The First General Revaluation of 1933–34 records the accommodation in detail. On the ground floor were a hall, two large reception rooms each measuring 18 feet by 24 feet, a smaller reception room, a cloakroom with lavatory, a separate water closet, a small kitchen, scullery, washhouse, servants' water closet, and a small outside larder. On the first floor were one large bedroom, two smaller bedrooms, and one maid's bedroom in the wing, with a bathroom. The house had electric light from its own generating plant and central heating. It was described as "old fashioned" but in "fairly good condition of repair." The rear portion of the house — constituting the original 1760s dwelling — was let to tenants, and after the conversion of the local workhouse into a hospital in 1932 it was used to house the former workhouse population for a time. In the later 1930s it became the home of W. Haughton Crowe, head teacher of Banbridge Academy, who wrote that he was very grateful to be "housed comfortably in the spacious older part of a divided Huntly House," as accommodation was hard to come by in the depressed 1930s. This earlier portion was valued at £40 and was demolished in the later years of the 20th century.

ALTERATIONS AND REPAIRS

The house was listed in 1977. During the 1970s and 1980s repairs were carried out to the roof and chimneys, including damp and dry rot treatment. In 1992 renovation work was undertaken to the gates, piers, railings and boundary walling. In 2005 the remaining return was demolished and replaced with a large extension including a conservatory, designed to echo the early Victorian character of the original house. The listing covers the house itself but excludes the modern return.