28 Scarva Street, Loughbrickland, Co Down, BT32 3NH

28 Scarva Street, Loughbrickland

A symmetrical one-and-a-half-storey three-bay semi-detached house predating 1819, located west of Scarva Road in the centre of Loughbrickland. The house is one of the earliest structures in the village and retains much of its original character despite recent refurbishment. It is listed as a Grade B2 building of architectural and local historical interest.

The building has a rectangular plan with a single-storey lean-to outshot to the rear. The pitched natural slate roof carries blue and black angled ridge tiles, with a roughcast rendered chimneystack topped by a single terracotta pot. Rainwater goods are uPVC on drive-in brackets. The east elevation (principal facade) is rendered roughcast and painted; the north gable is roughcast render with a platband under the eaves; the rear elevation is rubble stone with blank cheeks to the sides of the outshot.

Windows throughout are 6/6 timber sliding sash with horns and exposed boxes; masonry sills are projecting. Those to the north gable are set in smooth rendered surrounds. The principal elevation is symmetrically arranged with a central four-panelled timber door flanked by sidelights and surmounted by a spider-web fanlight, with a 6/6 sash window to either side. The rear elevation contains 3/6 windows to left and right, with a glazed timber door to the left of the lean-to outshot and a 3/6 window to its right. The north gable displays a 3/6 window at first-floor centre and a boarded window at ground-floor centre.

The setting survives largely intact. The house is set back from the road to the east behind a lawn and shrub garden, bounded by a painted smooth rendered wall with coping stones topped with decorative cast-iron railings. Octagonal granite gate-piers with dome tops support a decorative cast-iron latch gate. The garden is bounded to north and south by rubble stone walls. The north gable fronts the road, with access from the north via modern timber gates to a gravelled driveway. To the rear stands a small garden and a slated rubble stone outbuilding with red-brick dressings.

Historical Context

The house has Georgian appearance and is potentially of late seventeenth-century origin. Nevil's survey of 1703, although stylised, shows a row of single-storey dwellings on this site. The house is attached to a line of outbuildings suggesting the arrangement depicted on this early map. An 1819 survey of the possessions of Nicholas C Whyte documents the house, and it appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833. Map evidence indicates the building dates from at least 1819 but may be considerably earlier.

Loughbrickland town itself was established in the late sixteenth century by Sir Marmaduke Whitchurch, to whom Queen Elizabeth granted the lands in 1585. Whitchurch built a castle on the shores of the lake and subsequently a church and mill, establishing a Protestant colony with rights of market and two fairs. The town and church were destroyed in the 1641 rebellion but the church was rebuilt in 1688, after which the town gradually recovered.

The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 lists the property as a house, offices, and yard, occupied by James Mullen and valued at £4 18 shillings. The classification indicates the house was thatched at this time, with a large thatched outbuilding to the rear. Griffith's Valuation (1856–64) shows the house remained thatched, with valuation reduced to £2 10 shillings. The occupier was John Mattock, leasing from Mary Anne Carson and later the Flagherty family. Patrick Coghlan took over in 1877, when the valuation rose to £4 10 shillings. Subsequent occupiers included James Shiels (1886), Henry Kearney (1901), Margaret Kearney (1924), and James Hugh Devlin (1928).

At the 1901 census the roof remained thatched and the house contained six rooms. Henry Kearney, an agricultural labourer from County Louth, lived here with his wife and six children aged between fourteen and thirty, the elder three sons also labouring. By 1911, Kearney was seventy-two and still working as an agricultural labourer; the roof had been slated or tiled by then. Two sons had become fowl dealers, and six of the eight living children remained at home with a nine-year-old grandson born in America. The house remained in the Kearney family until 1928.

Early 1930s accommodation comprised two upstairs bedrooms, two reception rooms, a kitchen, pantry, and scullery, with outbuildings including a byre, boiler house, and stable. The house was purchased in the early 1920s for £400 and let to tenants. It continues in use as a dwelling. The listing extent includes the house, gate, gate piers, wall, and railings.