2 Meredith Place, (aka 17 Drumadd Road), Armagh, Co. Armagh, BT61 9EA

No. 2 Meredith Place is the southernmost of a pair of semi-detached two-storey two-bay sandstone houses with basements and attics, built in 1842 and situated on the west side of Drumadd Road, to the east of Armagh City. The pair form a prominent feature along Drumadd Road and contribute to the historic character of the former settlement known as Drumadd village.

The house is rectangular on plan. Its roof is pitched natural slate with angled ridge tiles and clipped verges, and it shares a central rendered chimneystack with multiple replacement pots with the adjoining property. Projecting stone eaves carry a profiled plastic rainwater gutter. The principal east-facing elevation and the rear elevation are built in squared and snecked sandstone laid to courses with cement pointing, with dressed tooled quoins to the front. The rear elevation is random squared sandstone rubble. The south gable is cement rendered, with the quoin stones left exposed.

Windows throughout are replacement uPVC casements set within stepped red brick surrounds with rendered reveals and projecting painted masonry cills. The principal east elevation has two openings to each floor. The entrance is set to the south side and has a stepped brick surround with a patent reveal and a replacement uPVC door. A datestone inscribed 'M.A. / 1842' is set at the centre of the pair, integrated into the construction rather than applied, confirming the build date. At first-floor sill level on the south gable is a stone bearing a finely tooled inscription reading 'MEREDITH / PLACE', which is a notable surviving historic feature. The south gable also has one window at first-floor level aligned to the east, two attic windows, and two windows to the basement.

The rear elevation is abutted at basement level by a single-storey lean-to extension. There are two windows aligned to the north on the rear elevation; at half-landing level to the south there are two windows, the lower of which has a replacement concrete lintel; there is also an infilled window at attic level. The extension is cement rendered and of no particular interest. The north gable abuts the adjoining property. To the rear is an enclosed concrete yard accessed through a pair of modern timber gates hung on stone gate piers. The property backs onto the east bank of the Ballynahone River.

No. 2 has suffered significant loss of historic fabric. The original windows have been replaced with uPVC throughout, and the interior has been subdivided to create two flats, compromising the overall authenticity of the pair.

The history of the semi-detached pair is not entirely straightforward. 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 integrated datestone confirms construction in 1842. The initials 'M.A.' on the datestone correspond to Meredith Armstrong, a surgeon in Armagh and apothecary to the County Gaol, who resided in English Street and was presumably the original builder and owner of the property. A series of detailed hand-drawn town plan maps of Armagh from 1862 shows Meredith Place on sheet nine, captioned 'Merideth [sic] Place', with what appear to be two opposing sets of entrance steps. Despite this, the building is drawn as a single undivided property, with main entrance gates to the south side only, a formal garden to the north, and substantial outbuildings to the west and south, along with a bridge across the Ballynahone River to the land on the opposite bank. It is unclear why a building drawn as a single dwelling would have been constructed with two entrances.

The earliest recorded resident is William McKane, listed in the Provincial Directory of 1852. The Griffith's Valuation record of around 1863 lists Meredith Place as a single entry at the end of the Drumadd Village section, with Benjamin P. Davidson as tenant and Meredith Armstrong as lessor. The property is described as 'house, offices, yard and garden', valued at £23 10s, rising to £27 by 1882. By 1877, however, the Reverend Edwin Storr, minister of the Independent Church on College Street, was also listed as resident at Meredith Place in the Street Directory, suggesting the property was already functioning as two separate units at that time.

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 the property, which had fallen in value to £17. By 1890 the Valuation Revisions record two separately valued properties — one at £13 10s comprising house, office, yard and garden, and the other at £4 comprising a house only — both sublet by Davidson. The discrepancy in value suggests that one portion was sublet without the yard, garden, and ancillary buildings.

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 rose in value to £10. A marginal note in the valuations for 1895 reads 'improved and might let for £15', and also observes that 'these houses lie near Workhouse Fever Hospital tannery, south portion never let'. The difficulty in letting the properties is reflected in a rapid succession of tenants and periods of vacancy between 1891 and 1899. By 1899 the tenants were David Ferris in plot 63A, assumed to be No. 1 and valued at £12, and Edith M. Jarvis in plot 63B, assumed to be No. 2 and valued at £10. The values of both properties remained unchanged in 1929, at which time the occupant of 63A is recorded as William McClelland, and the lower-valued property was occupied by Clara and Sarah Hamilton.

By the third edition Ordnance Survey map of around 1900, the outbuildings 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 of the former outbuilding.

Although the pair are a prominent and characterful feature of Drumadd Road — distinguished by their fine squared and snecked sandstone construction, which is characteristic of the local urban grain, and their contrasting red brick window surrounds — and although No. 2 retains the notable 'Meredith Place' name stone on its south gable, the extent of alterations to No. 2, including the replacement of all original windows with uPVC and the internal subdivision into two flats, has compromised the authenticity of the pair to a degree that does not meet the threshold for statutory listing.