61 Killyvalley Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 5LX

61 Killyvalley Road, Coleraine is a Grade B2 listed building comprising a farmhouse, outbuilding, and gate.

The main house is a symmetrical two-storey, three-bay farmhouse dating from around 1799, set parallel to Killyvalley Road in the townland of Ballyagan, Garvagh. Built on a rectangular plan with a pitched natural slate roof, the building exemplifies the formalisation of modest farm buildings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The walls are rendered in roughcast with a smooth rendered plinth course and stepped quoins, painted grey. The principal north-west elevation is five windows wide to each floor, with windows more closely spaced at the outer bays. The central entrance comprises a uPVC door set within a simple classical surround of fluted pilasters and plain entablature, addressed by a concrete step. The front windows have painted moulded masonry architraves and painted projecting masonry cills. Originally glazed with 12-pane Georgian sashes and a four-pane fanlight, the front windows have been replaced with inappropriate uPVC examples, significantly degrading the building's character. Timber casements remain to the rear, and one original diminutive 2/2 sash survives to the north-west gable attic. The north-east and south-east gables each have a uPVC window to ground floor and a small attic sash. The rear elevation has irregularly spaced fenestration with a central stairwell window at mid-level and a uPVC door set to the right of centre. Modern rooflights and a large gabled dormer insertion with further rooflights have been added to the rear pitch. Roof detailing includes cement rendered gable chimneystacks rising from cement rendered verges and uPVC rainwater goods.

A single-storey roughcast outbuilding is set perpendicular to the rear of the house at ground floor left, with a pitched tin roof and replacement stable doors.

The property occupies an unspoiled rural farmland setting set parallel to and slightly back from the road, behind a small lawned garden. A wrought iron hoop gate supported on smooth rendered pointed piers marks the entrance, set within a roughcast boundary wall with smooth rendered plinth and no coping. To the rear of the house lies a farmyard accessed via a pair of circular piers with shallow conical caps supporting steel gates. The farmyard is bounded by modern farm sheds, with the exception of a two-storey rubble stone outbuilding to the south-east corner featuring original stable stalls and a cobbled ground floor; this building's roof has collapsed and its walling is random rubble stone, partially coursed, with openings formed in brick and timber infill to the loft.

Of particular note is a rectangular hay shed with rubble stone walls on three sides, open to the yard, featuring a distinctive barrel vaulted corrugated iron roof supported on segmental steel trusses. This structure enhances the rural character of the setting.

The house is said to have been the first slated two-storey house in the Garvagh district. It appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832 and is documented in the Townland Valuation of 1828-40, where the property was assessed at £5.18 shillings. The occupier at that time was Thomas Mayne, minister of Main Street Presbyterian Church, Garvagh, a family with connections to the Erskin Mayne bookshop in Belfast. The valuation records list the slated house alongside several thatched ancillary structures including the house of Mayne's mother, a byre, a car house, and a barn. The second Ordnance Survey edition of 1849-53 shows the current house with its abutting rear outbuilding. At Griffith's Valuation of 1856-64, the occupier was Robert Clarke, the property was leased from the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, and the house, situated within a plot of 31 acres, was valued at £5.10 shillings. The Clarke family subsequently acquired the property in fee under land purchase legislation in 1891. In 1878, some land from the farm was given up for the construction of the Derry Central Railway between Macfin Junction and Magherafelt, which opened in 1880. Robert Clarke died in 1882, leaving the farm at Ballyagan and another farm, Brookfield, to his sons, with provision made in his will for his widow to have the free use of a cow, sufficiency of turf or fuel, potatoes and oatmeal, and an annual payment of £15, together with continued residence in the house. At the 1901 census, Fanny Clarke, widow, lived in the eleven-room first-class house with her two sons, one of whom was a graduate of the Royal University of Ireland, and a 15-year-old domestic servant. Valuer's notes from the 1930s record Matthew Clarke as the occupier and list accommodation comprising a storeroom, two receptions, kitchen, scullery, pantry, and four bedrooms upstairs, noting the house as 'old' with low ceilings. The building was listed in 1977 and underwent renovation in the late 1990s, when the roofspace was converted. This conversion and the subsequent insertion of modern windows have detracted from the building's original character, though the house remains an interesting example of its type in its rural setting.