50 Drumlee Road, Ballyward, Banbridge, Co Down, BT31 9RT

50 Drumlee Road is a symmetrical two-storey, three-bay farmhouse built around 1870, located in the townland of Drumlee approximately two miles east of Castlewellan, accessed from a long hedgerow-lined lane off the Drumlee Road to the north. It incorporates an earlier dwelling to the rear that predates 1830. The house is a good example of a building type that is becoming increasingly rare, and the listing extends to the house itself, the stone outbuildings, and the pedestrian gate.

EXTERIOR

The main block has a rectangular plan form with a two-storey rear return. The roof is pitched, covered in natural slate with clay ridge tiles, masonry skews, and cast-iron rainwater goods. The rendered chimneys are ruled-and-lined with a corbelled upper course and clay pots. The external walling is also ruled-and-lined render throughout.

The windows are 8/8 timber sliding sashes with horns, masonry cills, and plain reveals. The first-floor windows are slightly diminished in height. The front door is a replacement four-panelled timber door with bolection mouldings and modern brass ironmongery; it is set within an elliptical-arched opening and flanked by multi-paned side lights with blank aprons above, with a spoked fanlight with a hub at the head.

The principal elevation faces south and is symmetrically arranged, with the front door centrally positioned, a ground-floor window to either side, and three first-floor windows directly above. The left gable has a single window at both ground and first floor.

The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged with painted lime render walling. There is a diminutive 6/3 sliding sash window to the first-floor right. On the left, the main block is abutted by the two-storey return that predates 1830. This earlier section has a pitched roof with clipped verges and a replacement chimney. Its north elevation has two 6/6 timber sliding sash windows at ground floor and two 6/3 sliding sash windows at first floor, all with horns, exposed sash boxes, shallow reveals, and painted masonry cills. The right gable of the return has a timber sheeted door to the right, a single window to the left, and a diminutive 6/3 sliding sash window to the first-floor left. The left gable of the return is blank.

The right gable of the main block has a single replacement ground-floor casement window to the right, with a single first-floor window directly above.

SETTING

The house sits on an elevated hillside site. Vegetation screens views to the principal elevation from the lane. The lane terminates at the rear yard, which is entered through rubble masonry piers; no gates are in place at this point, though some wrought-iron gates survive. A narrow garden addresses the principal elevation, with a raised concrete platform and dwarf wall at the front entrance. The garden is bounded to the east by a rendered wall with masonry coping and a pedestrian wrought-iron gate with a looped terminus. A simple wrought-iron gate gives access from the yard to a small enclosure.

The yard is surrounded by a variety of traditional outbuildings in two and single storeys, representing various phases of construction, all with pitched natural slate roofs and timber sheeted openings. To the east stands a two-storey roughcast rendered block with a loft accessed by external masonry steps; this is abutted by a lower shed, which in turn is abutted by a low two-storey rubble stone block with a perpendicular ridge, the latter having a large round-headed voussoired opening facing the yard. To the north is a two-storey rubble stone outbuilding with snecking and rough-dressed quoins, with stone slab external steps to the gable. It is abutted by a modern concrete block range of no architectural interest.

HISTORY

The site has a long documented history. The Townland Valuations of around 1830 record a farmstead here occupied by Hugh Magill, with the entire holding valued at £5 5s., including a house individually valued at £2 10s. 11d. before reductions, along with a large number of outbuildings. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 shows a number of buildings situated to the east of an ancient rath, arranged around the courtyard area to the rear of the current house; none of those buildings survives. By the second edition map of 1859 little had changed, though two small outbuildings had been added on the site of the current northernmost outbuilding. The north-eastern of these survives; the north-western was demolished after 1976.

Griffith's Valuation of around 1862 records Hugh Magill still residing at Drumlee, leasing from the Marquis of Downshire, with the farm value slightly increased to £8. Magill remained on the site until his death in 1866, at which point the lease was purchased by Robert Bingham. The Bingham family occupied the farm until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1929 and it was they who built the current two-storey farmhouse. Bingham's new dwelling was likely completed by around 1870, when the rateable value of the farm rose sharply to £18. The house first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–02 in its current L-shaped layout, including the north-facing rear return. The two-storey outbuilding to the north-east may also have been built around this time, replacing the several smaller outbuildings shown on earlier maps. The south-eastern outbuilding, which has a chimney and abuts the two-storey barn, may be a survivor from those earlier, smaller buildings.

Bingham successfully appealed his rateable assessment, and the value was reduced to £9 5s. in 1901. The 1901 Census records Robert Bingham as an 87-year-old widowed Presbyterian farmer living at Drumlee with his son James, aged 29, who worked the farm. The census building return classified the farmhouse as a second-class dwelling with four rooms, and noted farm buildings including a stable, two cow houses, a piggery, a fowl house, a boiling house, and a barn. Robert Bingham died in 1910, leaving the farm to James, who continued to reside there until at least 1929 and in 1922 purchased the farm outright from the Marquis of Downshire's estate.

An early 19th-century outbuilding that formerly stood to the west of the dwelling, visible on the earliest maps, was demolished in the late 20th century after 1976. At the time of the first survey in 1969 the farm was recorded as vacant but undergoing renovation. The building was listed in 1977.

Much of the historic fabric and the original layout survive intact from the 19th-century phase of construction, with a clear physical distinction between the earlier rear return and the later main block, together illustrating the historical development of the smallholding.