Landmore House, 126 Agivey Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4DT

Landmore House

Landmore House is a fine mid-Georgian double-pile brick country house, constructed around 1788 by Alexander Orr, a linen mill owner. It stands on a prominent elevated rural site overlooking Agivey Road, Aghadowey, and is notable both for the quality and local origin of its brickwork and for its association with George Dunbar, Belfast's first Mayor in 1842. The house is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1831–2, occupying much the same plan form as today.

Architectural Description

The house is symmetrical, two storeys over a basement and attic, five windows wide and three bays deep (double-pile plan), with a rectangular footprint. The roof is pitched natural slate with a valley concealed behind brick parapets to the sides; gable chimneystacks each have moulded masonry caps and octagonal clay pots. Half-round cast iron rainwater goods are carried on cavetto-moulded eaves enriched with dentil moulding, above a frieze with scroll motif.

The walling is Flemish-bonded red brick, locally made in the Agivey area, above a tooled masonry string course at basement level; the basement itself is coursed squared rubble with galleting, providing a deliberate material contrast to the upper brickwork. Windows are generally 6/6 timber sashes without horns, set in slightly projecting painted rendered reveals with flat brick arches over and tooled stone cills throughout. Basement windows are generally 3/3 with horns and have brick dressings.

The principal east elevation is symmetrical about a central segmental-arched entrance doorcase comprising a replacement hardwood entrance door flanked by fluted pilasters with festooned capitals and geometric sidelights, surmounted by a large spider-web fanlight, the whole embraced by semi-engaged columns with foliate capitals and a moulded masonry archivolt over. The entrance is approached by a flight of seven replacement concrete steps bridging the basement, with a tiled platform and flanking steel railings. The central first-floor window is flanked by 2/2 sidelights.

The south elevation has three windows vertically aligned to the left of centre, lighting a secondary stair at each half-landing. The right pile has two 6/3 attic windows, and there is a diminutive 2/2 window to the attic at the left side.

The rear (west) elevation has irregular fenestration. To the left of centre is a later lean-to two-storey sanitary extension; at the centre is a round-headed principal stairwell window at half-landing level over a small window lighting a store. The right bay has a uPVC door flanked by ground-floor windows, accessed by three modern steps bridging the basement, with first-floor windows aligned above. The left bay is ruled-and-lined cement rendered to the ground floor, lit by a window and with a modern garden door insertion at the left side, and two windows to the first floor. The extension is lit by a 2/2 window to the first floor and a later window to the ground floor, the latter contained within an additional lean-to outshot at the left cheek. The basement is exposed only to the right bay, where a replacement door with sidelights at the centre is reached by concrete steps, with two windows beneath the right bay. The north elevation has two windows to each floor including the attic, irregularly arranged; those to the ground floor are later 2/2 sashes with horns, with evidence of re-sized openings.

Setting and Outbuildings

The house sits within a rural elevated setting with pasture to the front, a tarmac forecourt and concrete yard to the rear flanked by small outbuildings of little historic interest. Farm buildings lie to the south, fronted by a long two-storey outbuilding with a pitched natural slate roof and rubble stone walling with some galleting and brick eaves. The façade is plain, pierced only by two reconfigured square openings (without glazing) flanking a central coach arch, and a series of ventilation loops at high level; the coach arch has a cobbled surface. The yard elevation has been remodelled and repaired in concrete block. The stables and stores are of limited historic interest.

The site is accessed via tree-lined avenues from Agivey Road to the east and Mullaghinch Road to the north. The eastern entrance is marked by a single-storey gate lodge on a half-hexagonal plan, with a hipped natural slate roof and central brick chimney. Its walls are brick with pebbledashed cement render over, and it has enlarged openings with replacement metal-framed windows and a replacement door. The interior is plainly detailed with a wall hearth, all cement rendered. The gate lodge is estimated to date from around 1810.

Historical Notes

The house was built around 1788 by Alexander Orr and descended to his son George, who adopted the maiden name of his mother and became George Dunbar. The Townland Valuation of 1828–40 records Alexander Orr as resident, with the house valued at £32. By 1836, George Dunbar was resident, and the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of that period describe the house as large, three storeys high and of brick, with an ample court. Its eight acres of ornamental grounds included an excellent garden and greenhouse, and the plantations around the house had been laid out by Alexander Orr. The Memoirs noted that the house commanded a rich view of County Antrim and the River Bann, whose winding course appeared with good effect at the bottom of the lawn above the plantations. No significant additions had been made by the 1830s. Also noted nearby was a so-called druidical altar — in fact a Neolithic tomb — located about a gunshot from Landmore House, which had been overturned by a local person searching for money beneath the pillars.

George Dunbar served as Member of Parliament for Belfast from 1835 to 1841 and became Belfast's first Mayor in 1842, the title of Sovereign having been used before that date. Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 finds George Dunbar still resident, with the house and outbuildings valued at £30 and situated on a plot of over 102 acres. The property subsequently passed to the Reverend James Henry Orr before Francis C. Watney took it over in 1877. At the time of the 1901 census, Francis's widow Elizabeth Watney was resident with her son, a Lieutenant in the Fourth Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, and two live-in servants — a cook and a house and parlour maid. The 15-room house was designated first class. The property later passed to Josiah A. Lyons and was then sold in 1945 to Major David Maitland Maitland-Titterton (1904–1988) of the Ayrshire Yeomanry for £2,750.

The First General Revaluation of the 1930s assessed the house as solidly constructed and in fairly good order but noted that considerable expenditure would be necessary to modernise the residence and install bathrooms and water supplies, water at that time being obtained from a rainwater tank in the roof and by hand pump. Accommodation comprised, in the basement: a dairy, engine room, coal and wine cellars, and a disused kitchen and scullery; on the ground floor: a large entrance hall, three reception rooms, a kitchen, scullery, larder and cloakrooms; on the first floor: six bedrooms and a boxroom; and five disused attic rooms approached by a secondary staircase, formerly for servant use. A 1944 valuation note recorded that the basement storey was built of heavy masonry and the upper superstructure of brick.

The Agivey Brick Tradition

The character of Landmore House is inseparable from the local brick-making tradition of the Agivey area. Brick production here is documented from at least the early 17th century: in 1615 George Canning, agent for the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, recorded the manufacture of bricks at a kiln across the River Bann from Agivey, where they were to be brought to complete the upper floors of a stone-built castle. The first edition Ordnance Survey maps of the 1830s show brickfields along the River Bann south of Coleraine, and the accompanying Memoirs note that bricks made in the parish of Agivey were used for local vernacular housing and brought up the Bann to Coleraine, selling for 10 shillings per 1,000. The Parliamentary Gazetteer of 1846 reported that coarse earthenware, bricks and tiles were made in considerable quantities from a clay that abounded in Agivey; a Potters Kiln and Potters Field appear on the second edition map of the 1850s in a settlement called Brick Hill at Mullaghmore. Brick production appears to have slackened during the second half of the 19th century, though brick kilns and clay pits are still shown on the third edition maps of around 1900. Brick has been the building material of choice for much of the vernacular and more formalised housing in this area, giving the locality a character distinct from the rubblestone construction more common elsewhere.

The house was listed in 1976, and repairs and renovations took place in the 1970s and 1980s.