Sylvan Hill House, Kilntown Road, Dromore, Banbridge, Co Down, BT25 1HR

Sylvan Hill House is a symmetrical one-and-a-half storey, three-bay mid-Georgian villa built around 1790, situated on Kilntown Road to the north-west of Dromore in the townland of Greenoge. It is a good example of a minor country house that evolved from simple beginnings, and is notable for its modest, elegant proportions and an elliptical doorcase with original detailing of particular quality.

The house is rectangular on plan with later extensions to the rear. The roof is pitched natural slate, with three roughcast chimneystacks fitted with moulded stone caps. Rainwater goods are ogee-profile cast iron, and the gables feature decorative bargeboards. External walls are roughcast rendered throughout.

The windows are replacement 6-over-6 timber sash units, all with painted masonry cills. On the principal elevation, these are set within later lugged cement architraves with a profiled label moulding, which were added around 1960.

The principal elevation faces south and is three openings wide. At its centre is an elliptical-headed entrance comprising a six-panelled timber door with cast-iron furniture including a lion's head knocker, a geometrical fanlight, and sidelights over timber apron panels. The whole is set within a rendered surround with a moulded archivolt and keyblock, and is approached by two replacement granite steps. The west gable has two attic windows; a former ground-floor window to the left has been converted into a door giving access to a modern conservatory that abuts the house at ground-floor level. The rear elevation is flanked by a two-storey flat-roofed extension to both left and right, with a single-storey flat-roofed extension at the centre. The exposed central section of the rear has a single uPVC window. Access to the rear is through a multi-paned glazed timber door with sidelights. The east gable has two timber casement windows at attic level and a modern timber glazed and panelled door at ground-floor level to the right.

The house is set slightly back from the road within a mature garden bounded by hedges and trees. A gravel forecourt is reached by a short curved drive to the left, marked at its entrance by a modern rendered wall and steel gates. The garden contains simple wrought-iron gates as well as a pair of ornate cast- and wrought-iron gates to the front garden, supported on cast-iron piers.

To the rear of the house stands a two-storey rubble stone outbuilding with a pitched natural slate roof. Its openings have timber sheeting and are headed by voussoir rubble stone or brick arches, with some also having brick jambs. Abutting this to the left is a single-storey brick outbuilding with a barrelled corrugated metal roof supported on Belfast trusses, and a tall rectangular chimney to its left side. This outbuilding has flush timber windows — two-over-two and six-light — without cills, set under timber lintels, with timber-sheeted doors. Its interior is divided into two rooms: the left-hand room contains a large open fireplace, and the right-hand room retains stable stalls. A cow-tail handled cast-iron water pump stands in the yard.

The house has a recorded history stretching back to around 1830, when the Townland Valuation records it as occupied by a Lieutenant Davis of the British Army, with the property valued at £9 14s. During the valuation period, a Miss Jane Walker came into possession of the site. The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 depicted the house as a rectangular building and showed the northern outbuilding already in existence at that time. By the time of the second edition Ordnance Survey map in 1858 no physical changes had been recorded, but it was on this map that the house was first named 'Sylvan Hill'. Griffith's Valuation of 1861 recorded Jane Walker still in occupation, leasing the site from the Earl Clanwilliam, with the house's value marginally increased to £10 10s.

Jane Walker remained at Sylvan Hill until around 1883, when a Mr Robert Walker — likely her son — took possession. Robert Walker did not personally reside there, but his relative Mary Walker was recorded as occupant in the 1901 census. Mary Walker, aged 48 and Unitarian by faith, worked as a farmer. The 1901 census building return described the house as a first-class dwelling with ten rooms, and noted a stable, cow house, barn and store among its outbuildings — most of which would have been located in the northern outbuilding. By 1911, Mary was living at Sylvan Hill with her widowed sister Janie, aged 62. The 1911 census reclassified the house as a second-class dwelling of five rooms, noting that the ten-room figure recorded in 1901 had been an error that led to the incorrect first-class rating.

Robert Walker was recorded as occupant until 1918, when the house passed to Mr Thomas Browne Wallace, a solicitor from Dromore, who also acquired several other properties in the townland that year. Although there is no direct evidence, the properties were presumably acquired through Wallace's solicitors' office; he continued to be recorded as occupant until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1930 despite not residing there himself.

According to the Archaeological Survey of County Down, the house was erected in the late 18th century, and around 1960 additions were made to the rear while cement label mouldings were installed around the entrance and front windows. The corrugated-iron outbuilding to the north-west was added in the late 20th century, after the current edition Ordnance Survey map of 1971. The house was listed in 1977, since which time the only recorded change has been the addition of the modern conservatory abutting the west gable.