38 Fairhead Road, Coolanlough, Cross, Co.Antrim

38 Fairhead Road, Coolanlough, Cross, Co. Antrim

A detached single-storey vernacular farmhouse built around 1830, located at the foot of a hill in open countryside southwest of Lough na Cranagh at Fairhead. The building is whitewashed rubble stone with rough-cast render and is rectangular on plan, facing east with projecting entrance porch and single-storey extensions to either end. Originally thatched, the roof is now pitched corrugated iron with painted metal ridge and slightly raised masonry verges. Two rendered chimneystacks with terracotta pots serve the central section.

The front elevation comprises a central three-bay section with a central flat-roofed projecting entrance porch, a single bay to the south gable with vehicular entrance, and a further two-bay section to the north gable. The entrance porch has a square-headed door opening to the left with replacement vertically-sheeted timber half-door and a timber casement window to the front. The south extension has vertically-sheeted timber vehicular doors and a metal Crittall-style multi-paned side-hung casement window without sill. The north extension has two window openings and a further square-headed door opening with corrugated iron clad door. Window openings throughout are square-headed with painted concrete sills; windows are predominantly single-pane sliding timber sash with ogee horns, or timber and metal casements. The south gable contains a painted rubblestone byre with corrugated iron roof. The west rear elevation has randomly placed window openings. The north gable is blind, with a shallow lean-to projection to the north extension featuring smooth rendered walls and a fixed-pane timber window. To the front of the original section is an area of stone setts.

The house and its contiguous outbuildings follow a traditional linear plan form with largely unchanged proportions. Despite twentieth-century alterations including the flat-roofed porch, traditional construction methods remain much in evidence throughout.

No. 38 is the largest dwelling in Coolanlough, a clachan (traditional settlement) comprising four similar dwellings informally arranged around the end of Fairhead Road. The settlement was first recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832. The group possesses strong vernacular character, enhanced by the survival of ancillary outbuildings and boundary walling. The four dwellings together represent a way of life once commonplace in Ulster and now increasingly rare. The integrity of this group increases its architectural and historical value.

The farmhouse was constructed prior to 1832 and was not recorded in the contemporary Townland Valuations (c.1834) as it fell below the £3 per annum threshold for inclusion. By mid-19th century, it was valued at £1 under Griffith's Valuation (c.1859), noted as leased by the Boyd family of Ballycastle and initially occupied by Denis McKinley, a local farmer. From the 1860s it was occupied by William McNeill, whose family remained at the address into at least the 1970s. The 1901 Census described it as a second-class dwelling with three rooms, originally possessing a thatched roof, with outbuildings comprising a stable, two cow houses, two piggeries and a barn. The McNeill family had purchased the farmhouse outright by the 1930s. Valuations increased from £1 in c.1859 to £2 5 shillings by 1936-57, and further to £5 5 shillings by the Second General Revaluation of 1956-72, when James McNeill occupied the property. A 1972 guide described the clachan as a small group of windswept cottages of considerable character and merit, situated near the lough on the Fair Head plateau. The building was listed in 1980.