10 Rectory Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT52 2LR

Former St John's Rectory, now in private use, built circa 1830 to designs by James Sands — the architect who later furnished designs for Hillsborough Castle for the 3rd Marquess of Downshire. The building is a fine and largely intact example of an early 19th-century rural rectory, retaining much of its original detailing despite some later alterations and refurbishments.

HISTORY

Building work began in July 1827, three months after the consecration of St John's Parish Church across the road, and the house was completed in 1828. The total cost was £565 7s 8½d, made up of a grant of £415 7s 8½d from the Board of First Fruits, a loan of £120 from the Board, and a loan of £30 from the vicar. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs record it as the residence of the Reverend Thomas Cupples and give it a mixed review: "a good house but the approach to it from the public road is not good, being between two office houses, neither is the ground around the house ornamented with planting." James Sands is named as the architect in those same Memoirs.

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1830 shows the house captioned as "Glebe House" and rectangular on plan with a small return. By the third edition of 1904, the house had been extended and had acquired a number of outbuildings arranged as a stable courtyard to the rear. A stable to the east was converted for use as a church hall in the 1920s.

Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 records the occupier as the Reverend William P. Oulton; the house and outbuildings were valued at £18 and situated in a plot of over 32 acres. Occupancy changed with each successive incumbent of the parish, and in 1875 a gatehouse was added to the valuation, raising the overall valuation to £19. The First General Revaluation of the 1930s records the ground floor as comprising two reception rooms, a study, a kitchen, and a pantry; the first floor contained four bedrooms, a WC, and a bathroom. The basement was used as stores and included a servants' hall. Water was supplied by a force pump to a tank on the roof; the house had no electricity or gas and was lit by oil lamps. A hard tennis court was among the outdoor facilities. The associated plan from the 1930s shows the house and outbuildings largely as they remain today.

The house was listed in 1977 and remained in church use until 1987, when it was sold. A condition of the sale required that it could no longer be referred to as a rectory. Some alterations and improvements took place in the late 1980s.

ARCHITECTURE

The building is a three-bay, two-storey-over-partial-basement detached house with an attic, arranged on a T-shaped plan. A two-storey entrance porch sits in the re-entrant angle, with a stairwell projection, a two-storey return, and a single-storey linking block to the rear.

The roof is pitched and hipped, finished in natural slate with blue-black angled tiles to the hips and ridges. Gables have raised masonry verges with kneeler stones. The chimneystacks are pebbledashed with moulded caps. Rainwater goods are aluminium half-round on metal brackets.

External walls are pebbledash on a rendered plinth with rendered quoins; the north elevation and east gable are finished in painted smooth render. Windows throughout are timber sash with horns, set in cement-rendered reveals with concrete sills — three-over-six pane to the first floor and six-over-six pane to the ground floor. Replacement timber casement windows have been fitted to the rear.

The principal elevation faces south. The L-shaped block has a projecting gable to the left with a window at each floor; the right bay has two windows at each floor. In the re-entrant angle, flush with the gable, is a full-height entrance bay with a hipped roof. This entrance bay has a window to each floor on its south face and opens to the east via a raised-and-fielded six-panel timber door with bronze door furniture, surmounted by a transom light with glazing bars. The door is flanked by panelled pilasters and topped by a corniced canopy carried on scrolled and carved console brackets; it is approached by three modern tiled steps.

The west elevation has four windows of three-over-three pane arrangement at attic and basement levels, and three windows at ground floor level, with those to the left more widely spaced.

The north rear elevation comprises the L-shaped block with a stairwell projection at the centre. At ground floor level this is abutted by a linking block; to the left is the two-storey hipped-roof return. The projecting bay to the right has a window at both first and ground floor. A long rectangular timber window lights the stairwell projection. The linking block below has two windows and access to the basement through a square-headed arch with a timber-sheeted door. The return has a window at ground and first floor on its north face; on the east elevation, a timber casement window in a red-brick stepped surround sits at first floor level above a raised-and-fielded six-panel timber door — note the original description records "sis panel" which appears to be a transcription error for "six panel" — accessed by three concrete steps. The east gable is blank.

SETTING

The house stands in rural surroundings on a large, mature site on the north side of Rectory Road, looking south towards St John's Parish Church, with which it shares group value. The site is entered from Rectory Road via a sweeping tarmacadamed avenue with replacement pebbledash entrance walls and tall round gate piers topped by ball finials. The area immediately in front of the house is gravelled with modern paving.

An informal yard to the east is enclosed to the south by a pebbledash wall featuring two glazed oculi on its south face. This wall is abutted by a single-storey rubblestone outbuilding with a slate lean-to roof and raised masonry verges; it opens to the yard through replacement timber-sheeted doors framed in red brick. To the north side of the yard stands a relatively intact two-storey outbuilding with a natural slate roof, retaining its original timber-sheeted louvred openings and a loading door at first floor level over three rectangular metal lattice windows with slate sills and a timber-sheeted door at ground level. The yard is enclosed to the east by a double-height cement-rendered church hall, which is abutted at its north gable by a single-storey extension. A modern corrugated tin agricultural shed stands to the north side of the yard.

Original wrought-iron gates survive at various points around the yard and at the entrance to the basement of the main house, supported on pointed concrete piers. A cast-iron cow-tail water pump stands to the south-west of the house.