Gortin House, 65 Ballygawley Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4DT

Gortin House

A symmetrical two-storey three-bay detached red brick farmhouse, built around 1850 and located on mature grounds to the south side of Ballygawley Road, south of Coleraine. The house has a rectangular plan with a projecting porch to the front and single-storey canted bays to the east and west. At the rear, there is a shallow two-storey extension and an original two-storey return, abutted by a modern lean-to porch extension dating from around 1980.

The roof is hipped with natural slate and rounded tiles to the hips and ridges, with two centred rendered chimneystacks. Plastic rainwater goods sit on overhanging boxed eaves. The walling is English garden wall-bonded red brick on a stone plinth with a stone string-course between floors; the rear elevation is roughcast rendered. Windows are 6/6 timber sash without horns, set into stone-lined reveals with projecting stone sills at ground floor and flush stone sills at first floor, all with red-brick voussoirs and apron detail. The canted bays have 6/6 windows to the central facet, flanked by 2/2 windows, and are surmounted by lead-lined roofs.

The principal elevation faces south and is symmetrically arranged about a single-storey projecting porch with five openings at each floor. The porch is clasped by slightly projecting piers and has a slightly projecting header-brick frieze surmounted by a moulded stone cornice. It opens to the south with a recessed round-headed entrance containing a replacement raised-and-fielded four-panel timber door surmounted by a timber fanlight and accessed via a single stone step. An original bronze bell-push on a timber plate is located to the right side of the door. The porch is lit by round-headed multi-paned windows at the left and right cheeks.

The west elevation has two widely-spaced windows at first floor, a window to the ground floor left, and a canted bay window at ground floor right. The east elevation is detailed similarly, with a canted bay window at ground floor left.

The north (rear) elevation features a shallow two-storey extension at the right with a modern rendered chimneystack, having three modern window insertions at first floor and a 2/4 window at ground floor, abutted by a modern rendered single-storey garage. A two-storey rendered return with hipped roof at the left has three uPVC windows and a uPVC door at the east elevation and is abutted at its north and west by a modern porch from around 1980, partially open with a timber-sheeted ceiling supported on square metal columns.

Setting and Outbuildings

The house is situated on a large site accessed from the northwest by a long concrete tree-lined laneway with a flat concrete bridge over a river having a wrought-iron parapet. The lane leads to an agricultural yard to the rear and the entrance to the front of the house. A modern cattle grid flanked by roughcast rendered walls with saddleback coping and square piers with pointed caps marks the approach. To the front of the house is a concrete forecourt and a small lawned garden bounded to the south by mature hedges. To the west is a concrete lean-to garage opening to the south with a timber-sheeted garage door. A modern timber fence to the east bounds neighbouring farmland.

The concrete yard to the rear contains a modified two-storey former coach-house to the north, having a hipped natural slate roof and roughcast rendered walls on a smooth rendered plinth. The south elevation of the coach-house has three narrow metal lattice windows at first floor and four six-paned timber windows at ground floor, with a set of large replacement square-headed timber sliding doors to the centre surmounted by a segmental-headed fanlight with red brick infill. A replacement timber-sheeted door is to the left and a round-headed timber-sheeted door to the right. The east gable of the former coach-house is abutted by a single-storey brick outbuilding with a timber-sheeted door at the left under a timber lintel. The yard is enclosed to the west by a modern single-storey concrete block outbuilding with a corrugated tin roof. To the north and east of the yard is a group of large modern agricultural sheds.