Ashfield House, 42 Killysorrel Road, Dromore, Banbridge, Co Down, BT25 1LB

Ashfield House is a symmetrical two-storey, three-bay farmhouse originating from the mid-18th century, built around 1760. It sits approximately two miles south-west of Dromore, just north of the junction between Killysorrell Road and Villa Wood Road. The house retains its historic character, appearance and plan form in good measure, including evidence of historic alterations. It is one of a number of noteworthy linen merchants' houses in the district and forms a coherent group of historic buildings with its associated outbuildings and former hemstitching factory.

Architectural Description

The house has a T-shaped plan form, with a porch, rear return and abutments. The roof is pitched and covered in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, masonry skews, roughcast rendered chimneystacks with moulded cornices, and circular clay pots; rainwater goods have been replaced in uPVC. The walls are roughcast rendered throughout.

The principal, south-facing elevation is symmetrically arranged. The entrance is set into the east cheek of a central flat-roofed single-storey porch, which has a single window to both its front and left cheeks. Windows flank the porch on either side at ground floor level, with three first-floor windows directly above. The ground-floor windows are 6-over-6 timber sliding sash with horns and masonry cills; the first-floor windows are 3-over-6 with no horns and painted reveals. The front door is a timber four-panelled door with an internal rectangular bead.

The west gable is asymmetrically arranged, with windows at ground and first floor to the left. The rear elevation has a gabled return abutting the centre; the re-entrant angle to its right is abutted by a lean-to addition. The exposed left bay of the rear elevation is lit by a first-floor window. The return is lit by sash windows at first-floor level and accessed via a lean-to porch at the east end, which has a glazed timber door and a 2-over-1 window to the cheek. The lean-to addition is flush with the west gable and is lit by a bipartite window at ground-floor level and a 6-over-6 sash above; it is extended further to the north by a lean-to extension with a sheeted door flanked by top-hung windows, each with a small 2-over-2 sash above. The east gable is asymmetrically arranged, with a single ground-floor window to the right and a reduced-in-scale 6-over-6 sliding sash at first-floor right. The ground-floor right of the east gable is abutted by a mono-pitched, slate-roofed roughcast outbuilding with two doors and a window to its north elevation.

Setting and Associated Buildings

The house sits in a rural setting with an extensive range of outbuildings to the rear and a large former hemstitching factory beyond. The site is now accessed via a new entrance from the road, with the original entrance leading to the factory. The southern boundary is defined by a roughcast wall with cylindrical piers and wrought-iron gates giving access to the rear yard. In front of the house is a simple garden, with the remains of rubble walls and wrought-iron gates elsewhere on the site.

The rear yard is enclosed by outbuildings that predate 1830, constructed largely of exposed rubble masonry, partially rendered, with natural slate roofing. Beyond the yard stands a large, rectangular-plan, three-storey former hemstitching factory with a pitched natural slate roof, brick chimneystacks, and cast-iron rainwater goods; the ground and first floors are of rubble masonry and the second floor is of brick. To the north-west is a modern steel-framed timber stable block, which is of no historic interest.

The outbuildings and former factory are listed separately and are integral to the overall setting and significance of Ashfield House, the factory representing the industrial connections of the house and its association with the local linen industry.

Historical Background

Ashfield House was built around 1760 and is regarded as the oldest surviving former residence of the Lindsay family, one of the most respected families connected with the textile industry in the Banbridge area. The Lindsays were originally from Scotland and came to Ireland in 1642 during the Irish Confederacy War (1641–53), arriving as part of the army of General Monro, which was sent to quell the Irish Catholic Rebellion that had begun in 1641. In the aftermath of the conflict, the family settled at Tullyhenan and established their first dwelling there. Their later residences included Tullyhenan House, Moorlands, Balleevy House and Clanmurry.

The house was not originally built by the Lindsays: from 1766 it was leased to the Reverend W. Hewig and was occupied by his son John Hewig in 1789. It was not until 1792 that Maurice Lindsay (1745–1815) purchased Ashfield House. Maurice Lindsay was the son of David Lindsay (born 1710) of Tullyhenan House, the family home for over 250 years.

It was Maurice Lindsay's son David Lindsay (1795–1859) who established the first textile business at Ashfield in 1828, weaving heavy fabrics on hand looms. By 1839, Lindsay employed 950 weavers who predominantly manufactured linens, unions and cottons from home. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 shows the two-storey house and both two-storey barns to the north-east already in place, though the factory had not yet been built; the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1834 and 1837 did not list Ashfield among the manufactories and mills in the parish of Dromore. The three-storey factory appears to have been constructed between 1836 and 1858, when it first appears — depicted as an L-shaped building — on the second edition Ordnance Survey map. The Townland Valuations record Ashfield House as valued at £15 13s and occupied by David Lindsay.

On David Lindsay's death in 1859, the property passed to his son Maurice Lindsay. The entire site — house, factory and a gate lodge on the Killysorrell Road (since demolished) — was jointly valued at £50 in Griffith's Valuation of 1861, with Maurice Lindsay occupying the property as a tenant of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the Church of Ireland having remained the largest landowner in Ireland during the 1860s. Griffith's Valuation also noted that Lindsay was the lessor of around twenty private dwellings at the crossroads of Killysorrell Road and Villa Wood Road, occupied collectively by his workforce and known as Ashfield Village. As Rankin records, the Lindsay family played a notable part in the development of the linen industry of the Bann towards the end of the 18th century, and were connected with many other well-known linen families, including the Crawfords, Mulligans and Hunters.

Maurice Lindsay died in 1877 and the property left the Lindsay family after approximately 85 years of occupation. On 26 March 1878, Ashfield was sold by public auction at the Downshire Arms Hotel in Banbridge. The Banbridge Chronicle described it as "nicely situated, and in every way suitable for a Gentleman's residence, is very commodious, substantially built and slated, and in excellent order," with outbuildings "very extensive, and well adapted for carrying on the Linen Manufacturing business on a large scale." The lease was purchased by a Mr John Moore, who also acquired the 21 dwellings of Ashfield Village.

The 1901 Census records Moore (aged 65, Unitarian) as a linen manufacturer and Justice of the Peace for County Down, a widower residing at Ashfield with his daughter Mary Alexandra (aged 23). The census building return described the house as a first-class dwelling with ten rooms and a range of out-offices including a stable, two cow houses, a dairy, piggery, boiling house, barn, forge and laundry room in the north-eastern outbuildings. Moore was also lessor for all dwellings in the townland of Killysorrell, with the vast majority of the townland's population employed in his factory. The Annual Revisions identify John Moore's three-storey factory as a hemstitching works; it is first captioned as a "hemstitching factory" on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1903.

John Moore continued to reside at Ashfield until his death around 1911, when his daughter Julia Moore (aged 45) took over the site. By 1914 a Mr William A. McMurray had taken possession of the house and factory. By 1922 the Coey family had occupied Ashfield, with Messrs George H. and Edward Coey purchasing the lease and recorded as occupants in the Annual Revisions. The house continues to be occupied by a relative of the Coey family.

The former gate lodge to the site, constructed around 1860, was demolished after the current edition of the Ordnance Survey map in 1973. Ashfield House was listed in 1977.