Fairlea, 6 Cullycapple Road, Aghadowey, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, BT51 4AR

Fairlea, formerly known as Cullycapple, is a symmetrical three-bay two-storey detached rendered house built around 1840 and located on the north side of Cullycapple Road in Aghadowey, south of Coleraine. It represents a well-preserved example of a middle-sized Victorian house displaying proportions and detailing typical of the period, and makes an important contribution to the architectural quality and character of the surrounding area.

The building comprises an L-shaped block with an additional rectangular block to the re-entrant angle, creating a square plan, with a single-storey return and a variety of small abutments to the rear. The hipped roof is covered with natural slate and terracotta tiles to ridges and hips. Two central rendered chimneystacks with simple caps and four tall clay pots rise through the roof. Cast-iron half-round rainwater goods are mounted on brackets.

The walling is painted smooth render on a chamfered plinth with raised quoins. Windows throughout are timber sash without horns, set in narrow painted render surrounds with projecting painted sills. The first floor has 3/6 windows and the ground floor 6/6 windows.

The principal elevation faces east and is three openings wide at each floor. At the centre of the ground floor is an elliptical-headed opening with an entablature on pilaster jambs rising from sweeping side walls which enclose three stone steps. This enframes a fine example of an early nineteenth-century doorcase, comprising a bolection-moulded four-panelled timber door with bronze door furniture. The door is flanked by wide leaded lattice sidelights with coloured glass panels and projecting sills, and surmounted by a similar elliptical-headed transom light. A cast-iron levered bell-pull is mounted to the left jamb.

The south elevation is four windows wide at each floor. The west rear elevation contains a round-headed 1/1 window and a 3/3 window to the first floor; a 6/6 window to the ground floor right. Abutted at the right is a single-storey toilet-block projection with a slated lean-to roof and the single-storey return. Abutted at the left is a tall flat-roof projection surmounted by a water tank and a roughcast rendered single-storey lean-to annexe with a chamfered northeast corner. The return has modern window openings to north and south elevations, with a dormer window to the attic on the south elevation. An early twentieth-century timber greenhouse with decorative crestings to the ridgeline abuts the south elevation. The projection is almost full height and opens to the south with a round-headed arch into a porch with a timber-sheeted entrance door. The annexe has a large window opening to the west elevation and a timber-sheeted door to the east. The north elevation has a window to the first floor left and ground floor right; the right section has three windows to the first floor, with the central window being a 1/1 round-headed opening, and windows to the left and right at ground floor.

The setting comprises mature grounds accessed from Cullycapple Road to the south via a tree-lined avenue leading to a rear yard laid with concrete and enclosed by large metal and timber gates. To the west side of the yard is a one-and-a-half-storey painted roughcast render outbuilding with a slated roof and rendered chimneystack with clay pot to the south gable. It opens to the yard at the east with three replacement timber-sheeted doors and is abutted at the west by a rubblestone slated outbuilding. The yard is enclosed to the south by a modern garage, which abuts the gable of the single-storey return. To the southwest is a timber conservatory with a plastic roof awning. Wrought-iron gates and piers are positioned to the north side of the house with a gravelled path leading to a mature garden at the front.

A building shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1831-2 appears to have survived as an outbuilding to the current dwelling. The present house is first shown as a square structure with two outbuildings to the west on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1849-53. Cullycapple has been extended to the rear by the third edition of 1904-5, with a further outbuilding also added and surviving.

The house is listed in Griffith's Valuation of 1856-64 as the home of James Thomson, a merchant who leased it from the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers. The house and outbuildings were valued at £14 and situated on a plot of four acres. The house remained in the Thomson family until the 1930s. At the time of the 1901 census, the inhabitants were five unmarried Thomson sisters—Elizabeth, Marianne, Martha, Jane and Emily—aged between fifty and seventy, employing a live-in domestic servant in the seventeen-room house designated as first class. The five sisters remained at the house at the 1911 census. On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Miss Jane Thomson took charge of donations of chocolate and subscriptions for Aghadowey Presbyterian Church's contributions to the war effort. She wrote a poem 'To the Ulster Volunteers' published in the Coleraine Chronicle in 1916, with the refrain: 'Courage, boys, courage / Be this your daily cry / But don't forget to trust in God / And keep your powder dry'. Jane was the last of the sisters to pass away in 1937 and is buried in Aghadowey Presbyterian churchyard.

In the 1930s the accommodation comprised three receptions, two kitchens, two pantries, two sculleries, an oil room, a servants' room accessed by separate stairs, five bedrooms, a linen room, a boxroom, bathroom and WC. The house was well built and kept in good repair but was still lit by oil lamps in 1940 and water was fed into a tank by means of a hand pump. The building was listed in 1977 and renovation work took place in the 1970s and 1980s including restoration of the former servants' quarters and rebuilding of the conservatory.