Clanmurry, 16 Lower Quilly Road, Dromore, Banbridge, Co Down, BT25 1NL

Clanmurry

Clanmurry is an early 19th-century two-storey, three-bay gentleman's house, constructed prior to 1834, in the townland of Quilly to the west of Dromore. The house is T-shaped on plan and retains much of its original fabric, proportions, and detailing, notwithstanding mid-20th-century additions. It is one of several substantial houses in the immediate vicinity connected to the local linen industry, and is a good representative example of the type in largely original condition and setting.

Exterior

The principal, east-facing elevation is symmetrical, arranged around a projecting canted single-storey entrance porch with a plain entablature and a continuous wide projecting stone plinth. The porch door faces south; the east face has a 6-over-6 timber sliding sash window flanked by 2-over-2 sashes (horizontally divided) to the canted sides. The walling throughout the main block is painted render without a plinth. The hipped roof is natural slate with leaded ridges and hips, plain rendered chimneystacks with simple caps, and ogee-profile cast-iron rainwater goods over boxed eaves.

Windows to the main block are timber sliding sashes: 6-over-6 to the ground floor and 3-over-6 to the first floor, with moulded architraves, plain entablatures at ground-floor level, and painted masonry cills throughout. Reveals to the rear elevation and return are plain. The mid-20th-century entrance door has ten flat panels and a three-pane transom over, set within a moulded architrave with plinth block.

The south elevation of the main block has one window to each floor; the ground-floor window is a tripartite arrangement of 6-over-6 with 2-over-2 sidelights. At ground-floor level this elevation is extended by a single-storey addition. The right-hand section, dating from the mid-20th century, comprises a portico on two Tuscan columns flanked by half-columns, with a cornice and leaded blocking course, now infilled with contemporary glazing and French doors. To its left is a modern kitchen extension in a similar style, with a tripartite window.

The rear elevation is abutted centrally by a substantial full-height return, four windows deep with unequal spacing. The exposed section of the rear elevation has two first-floor windows to each side of the return and a ground-floor window to the left bay; the right bay and the return to the south are completely abutted at ground-floor level by the extension described above. The rear elevation has one first-floor window and two ground-floor windows, with rear access via a timber sheeted door to the left side. The north elevation mirrors the south, with one window to each floor.

Setting and Outbuildings

Clanmurry sits within substantial landscaped gardens to front and rear, completely screened from the road by mature planting. To the south is a paved terrace with a pond at a lower level, accessed from a gravel forecourt through a small wrought-iron pedestrian gate. The walled garden to the west is bounded by a rendered wall; running along its western perimeter is a dirt lane with wrought-iron gates. This walled access from the rear gate is particularly unusual and of note.

The main entrance avenue approaches from the east, entered through a pair of square rendered panelled piers with shallow pyramidal caps and eroded cast-iron gates. At the time of survey, a modern house in the style of a gate lodge was under construction flanking the entrance.

To the rear is a long rectangular coach yard bounded to the west by a two-storey outbuilding with a pitched slate roof. Its east (yard-facing) elevation is roughcast render cut back to expose granite quoins; its west elevation, overlooking the walled garden, is English garden wall bonded red brick with a concrete skirt, and has replacement windows and timber sheeted doors on plinth blocks. A second, separate two-storey outbuilding is of little architectural interest. The setting as a whole, whilst of some interest, is compromised in places by modernisation.

Historical Background

The house is believed to have been built in 1820, during the height of the linen industry, and first appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834, already in its current T-shaped form. An outbuilding shown to the rear at that date had been removed before the second edition of 1858, by which time all of the surviving outbuildings — including a single-storey gate lodge to the south-east, described by architectural historian J. A. K. Dean as "a most unremarkable lodge of standard plan" dating from around 1840 — had been constructed.

The earliest recorded occupant is William McClelland, a local linen merchant, noted in Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of 1837, whose property was valued at £15 17s. in the Townland Valuations of the 1830s. McClelland is likely to have been connected to the McClelland family, one of the most respected linen families in the Banbridge area, who had originally settled in Banbridge from the mid-18th century and resided at Millmount before vacating that property by the late 18th century. Robert McClelland later established the Banbridge Weaving Factory in 1865, though the precise relationship between William McClelland of Clanmurry and this wider family is not established. By around 1860, William McClelland was leasing a nearby beetling mill owned by Waldron Burrowes of Lagan Lodge, presumably for use in his linen business. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1861 — by which point Clanmurry was also being let by Waldron Burrowes — the property was valued at £42, reflecting the improvements and additions made between the two Ordnance Survey editions.

William McClelland died in 1864, and Clanmurry passed to his widow Mary McClelland, who herself died in 1867. The house then passed to William Jardine, who operated a hemstitching and finishing business in Dromore's Market Square known as William Jardine & Co. According to local historian Rankin, William Jardine was a relative of George Crawford Lindsay (1813–1885), a linen merchant and local magistrate who resided at Moorlands, and the Lindsay family — who originated in Scotland and settled at Tullyhenan following the 1641 Rebellion — had by the 18th and 19th centuries established themselves as one of the most prominent families in the local linen industry, associated with Tullyhenan House, Moorlands, Ashfield House, and, through Jardine, Clanmurry. Local historian Doloughan records that William Jardine & Co. was based at No. 30 Market Square in Dromore, and that the firm also bleached and dyed yarn at properties on the Lurgan Road.

By 1864, Waldron Burrowes had sold Clanmurry to the Church Temporalities Commissioners. By the 1880s, following the Irish Land Commission's assumption of control of church-held properties from 1881, the house was being let to the Jardine family by the Land Commission. By 1891, William Jardine had vacated Clanmurry — possibly through death, though no will is recorded — and a Miss Elizabeth (Eliza) Jane Jardine took sole possession; at the same time, two outbuildings at the site were noted as no longer in use, and the valuation was accordingly reduced to £37.

The 1901 census describes Clanmurry as a first-class dwelling of 14 rooms. Eliza Jane Jardine (then aged 59, of Unitarian faith) was the owner of William Jardine & Co., and resided at Clanmurry with her nephew Charles McCaw Baxter (23), who acted as factory manager, her sister Sarah McCaw Baxter (55), and a number of domestic servants. The building return also recorded a considerable farm with a large number of outbuildings including a stable, two cow houses, a dairy, piggery, fowl house, boiling house, laundry, and barn. The 1911 census shows little change, and Eliza Jane Jardine continued to live at Clanmurry until her death in 1926, when her nephew Charles McCaw Baxter inherited. In 1929, while the business had passed to Jardine and Baxter, the dyeworks factory on the Market Square was damaged by fire, though the hemstitching factory was unaffected.

Clanmurry was listed in 1977. The Baxter family continued in occupation at least until the first heritage survey in 1969, when a Mr J. E. Baxter was recorded as the resident. In 1985 the house was purchased by John and Sara McCorkell, who converted it into a bed and breakfast. The McCorkell family is also of historical note: from 1778 they owned the McCorkell Line, a passenger shipping company that primarily transported passengers from Ireland, Scotland, and England to the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries. Several paintings of shipping vessels within the house reflect this nautical heritage.

The single-storey flat-roofed extension and pillared entrance porch were added between the fourth edition Ordnance Survey map (1903–16) and the current edition of 1973. Since that survey, the southernmost outbuilding — first constructed by 1858 — has been demolished, and the next outbuilding to the north has been largely demolished, with only the western portion remaining. The single-storey gate lodge to the south-east of the house survives.