1 Meredith Place (aka 15 Drumadd Road), Armagh, BT61 9EA

No. 1 Meredith Place is the northernmost of a pair of semi-detached two-storey, two-bay sandstone houses with basements and attics, built in 1842 and located on the west side of Drumadd Road, east of Armagh City. The Ballynahone River bounds the properties to the west. The pair is a prominent feature along Drumadd Road and contributes to the historic character of the former settlement known as Drumadd village.

The houses are well-proportioned with restrained detailing, distinguished by fine squared and snecked sandstone construction characteristic of the local urban grain, contrasted with openings formed in red brick. No. 1 is rectangular on plan and retains its original plan form, timber sash windows (later insertions), and significant internal historic fabric. Its neighbour, No. 2, has lost its original windows.

The roof is pitched natural slate with angled ridge tiles and clipped verges, and a shared central rendered chimneystack with multiple replacement pots. Projecting stone eaves support a profiled plastic gutter. The main walling is squared and snecked sandstone built to courses with cement pointing, with dressed tooled quoins to the front (east) elevation. The rear elevation is random squared sandstone rubble, and the north gable is cement rendered.

Windows throughout are 1/1 timber sliding sashes, generally without horns, set within stepped red brick surrounds with rendered reveals and projecting painted masonry cills. The principal elevation faces east and has two openings to each floor. The entrance is set to the north side and has a stepped brick surround with a patent reveal, fitted with a mid-20th-century timber door featuring an oval glazed top panel over three vertical panels. A datestone inscribed "M.A. / 1842" is set at the centre of the pair.

The cement-rendered north gable has a first-floor window aligned to the east, an attic window aligned to the west, and two basement windows, the left of which is boarded over. The rear elevation has French doors inserted at ground-floor right, with a window above at first-floor level; the left side has two windows at half-landing level. The basement has a 20th-century partially glazed (now boarded) timber door to the left; the right side is abutted by a later rear extension to the basement, which has now collapsed. The south gable is abutted by the identical adjoining property.

The house is street-fronted and backs onto the east bank of the Ballynahone River. There is an enclosed yard to the rear with an overgrown linear garden stretching to the north. To the north, a wall of similar construction to the house bounds a vacant plot and has a timber-sheeted gate leading to the rear. The setting is enhanced by large gardens to the side, bounded to the road by a stone wall.

The historical record for the pair is complex, pointing to a history of later subdivision and reconfiguration that is not clearly evident in the surviving building fabric. No. 1 appears to retain the original layout, mirrored in the adjoining property, suggesting the pair were built as such rather than as a single dwelling. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1835 shows the site as a vacant plot, though a rectangular building appears slightly to the north. The datestone is not applied but integrated into the construction, giving reasonable certainty that the pair were built as indicated in 1842.

The second edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1863 is damaged and the relevant portion obscured, but a series of detailed hand-drawn town plan maps of Armagh survives from 1862. Sheet 9 shows the building captioned "Merideth [sic] Place" with substantial outbuildings to the west and south, a bridge across the Ballynahone River to land on the opposite bank, and a formally laid-out rectangular garden to the north entered through a gate to the south. The plan map appears to show two opposing sets of entrance steps corresponding to the existing entrances. However, the building is drawn as undivided, with main entrance gates to the south side only and outbuildings informally grouped with internal dividing walls shown. The purpose for which a single dwelling would have been built with two entrances is unclear.

By the third edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1900, the returns to the west had either been demolished and replaced with extensions or joined to the main range, and the south range had been extended to form a separate house corresponding to the plan form of the former outbuilding.

The earliest recorded resident is William McKane, listed in the Provincial Directory of 1852. Griffith's Valuation of around 1863 lists Meredith Place individually at the end of the entry for Drumadd Village, recording a single entry with the tenant as Benjamin P. Davidson. The lessor was Meredith Armstrong, whose initials appear on the datestone and who was presumably the original builder. Armstrong was a surgeon in Armagh and apothecary to the County Gaol, residing in English Street. The valuation describes the property as "house, offices, yard and garden," valued at £23 10s and increased to £27 by 1882.

By 1877, the Reverend Edwin Storr, minister of the Independent Church on College Street, is also listed as resident at Meredith Place in the Street Directory, suggesting the property had by that time been divided into two units. Benjamin Davidson was a land and house agent working for the Northern Fire and Life Insurance Office; his wife and daughters ran a private ladies' school from the family home at Meredith Place during the 1880s. By 1889 Davidson had begun subletting, and the property had fallen in value to £17. The following year, Valuation Revisions record two properties valued at £13 and £4 respectively, both sublet by Davidson. The discrepancy in value suggests that one half was sublet as a house only, without yard, garden, and ancillary buildings. Valuation Revisions of 1890 confirm the split into two sublet portions: one valued at £13 10s comprising house, office, yard and garden, and the other valued at £4 comprising a house only.

In 1895 Davidson was succeeded as leaseholder by D. P. Walker Martin, an Armagh income tax collector, who appears to have made substantial improvements to the lower-valued property, which increased in value to £10. A marginal note in the 1895 valuations reads "improved and might let for £15," and also records that "these houses lie near Workhouse Fever Hospital tannery, south portion never let." The difficulty in letting the properties is reflected in a quick succession of tenants with periods of vacancy between 1891 and 1899. By 1899 the tenants were David Ferris in plot 63A (assumed to be No. 1, valued at £12) and Edith M. Jarvis in plot 63B (assumed to be No. 2, valued at £10). The values of both properties remained unchanged by 1929, at which time the occupant of 63A is recorded as William McClelland and the lower-valued property as Clara and Sarah Hamilton.