Laburnum Lodge, 38 Tirmacoy Road, Ballykelly, Co Londonderry, BT49 9PE

Laburnum Lodge is a pleasing, small mid-Victorian house built around the 1870s in a rural provincial Georgian style. It is located on the south side of Tirmacoy Road, set back a garden’s length and forming part of a farmyard group, closing one of its sides. The house is accessed via an avenue with decorative iron gates and a separate laneway leading to the farmyard. A well-tended front garden is characteristic of the property.

The house is a two-story, three-bay wide structure with gables, natural slate roofing, and red brick chimneys on each gable. The walls are finished in roughcast lime wash. A single-story, slated, gabled extension is attached to the north gable. The north gable features one asymmetrically placed ground floor window, a sliding sash with four panes, and two small, two-pane horizontal rectangular windows high in the gable. The main facade exhibits a central doorway with side lights, and a 16-pane sash window on one side. A projecting, single-story canted bay with three four-pane sash windows was inserted in 1924, disrupting the original symmetry of the facade. Three 12-pane sash windows are positioned at first floor, directly above those on the ground floor. The rear elevation presents a similar arrangement of first-floor windows but with an off-centre back door, lacking side lights and a fanlight. Ground floor windows at the rear have been altered from sash to hardwood with top-hung vents; the window in the single-story extension is 16-pane and may be original, potentially taken from the position of the canted bay. The roof has minimal downpipes and gutters supported on iron brackets, with untidy PVC pipework detracting from the rear elevation’s appearance.

The house was likely built by the Fishmongers Company around 1870. It was not included in Griffith’s Valuation of 1858; at that time, the property was occupied by Robert Murray, whose house was likely part of the existing farm buildings. The McSparran family have resided there for three generations, and previously the property belonged to the Townley family, who were related to the McSparrans and were common in Tirmacoy and the surrounding area. Mr. McSparran maintained a keen interest in Clydesdale horses, with prize-winning specimens. The house does not appear on the 1848 Ordnance Survey Sheet.