Carrickmore House

Carrickmore House is a detached, symmetrical, three-bay, two-storey house over a basement, rendered in the Italianate style and built around 1879. It stands on a slightly elevated site on the north side of Rock Road in the townland of Pennyburn, facing east and overlooking the River Foyle. Although now in use as university teaching accommodation forming part of the Magee University Campus, it began life as a substantial private gentleman's mansion and retains considerable architectural and historical interest.

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER AND EXTERIOR

The house is essentially square on plan with a hipped natural slate roof arranged on a U-plan, finished with black clay ridge tiles and three replacement rendered chimneystacks. Moulded cast-iron guttering runs beneath a bracketed overhanging eaves course, with cast-iron downpipes. The external walls are painted rendered with rusticated rendered quoins and a moulded trim to the plinth course.

Windows throughout are square-headed with architrave surrounds, hood mouldings, painted masonry sills, and single-pane timber sash windows with convex horns.

The principal front elevation is symmetrical across three bays, two storeys over a basement, with a central portico as its focal point. The ground floor windows sit within shallow bay projections that rise from basement level, each having a lead-lined hood cornice with a central window and slender sidelights flanked by slender pilasters that support a plain entablature and rise from a continuous sill with plain panelled aprons.

The main entrance is a square-headed tripartite timber doorcase comprising a four-panel timber door flanked by fixed-pane sidelights, with slender pilasters and scrolled console brackets supporting a lintel cornice and a tripartite glazed overlight above. The door opens onto a sandstone-paved platform reached by five sandstone steps that bridge across the basement area. The doorcase is flanked by Doric pilasters with responding Ionic columns, together supporting a full dentilated entablature with a felt covering. The platform and steps are enclosed by original wrought-iron railings, while a replacement steel railing encloses the basement area. These sweeping entrance steps and the portico make a particularly impressive statement, especially given the building's prominent position above the River Foyle.

The south side elevation has three windows to the first floor and two to the ground floor, detailed to match the ground floor windows of the front elevation, with tripartite window openings to the basement having plain surrounds. The north side elevation has randomly placed window openings detailed to match those of the first floor of the front elevation, with a flat-roofed single-storey extension abutting the right-hand side of this elevation. The west rear elevation has randomly placed window openings with single-pane timber sash windows as well as later timber casement windows. Abutting the centre of the rear elevation is a flat-roofed rendered corridor connecting the house to a two-storey rendered block constructed around 1989.

SETTING

The house is set back from the north side of Rock Road on a slightly elevated site with mature trees and planting to the south. There is no boundary wall and a large tarmac car park lies to the east, which has an adverse impact on the quality of the setting. Although physically separated from the Magee University Campus to the south by Rock Road, Carrickmore House is considered part of that wider campus and forms one of a good collection of 19th-century buildings that contribute significant character to the Magee Conservation Area, in which it was included in 2006.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Rock Road itself was first recorded on maps of 1689 and first named in 1865, taking its name from a house and hamlet known as the Rock, situated on the hill overlooking Strand Road. The first edition Ordnance Survey map for Londonderry (1830) records that a sand pit occupied the site of Carrickmore House in the early 19th century. Annual Revisions record that the house was built in 1879 on land owned by the Gillilands of Brookhall, and was initially valued at £65. It was noted at that time to have a two-storey outbuilding to its south-west side, which has since been demolished and replaced by a modern extension.

The first recorded occupant was Quinn J. Brownrigg, County Inspector to the Royal Irish Constabulary, who lived here until 1884. He was followed by a Mr. Stewart H. Bruce, who may have been Major S. Hervey Bruce, the governor of H.M. Prison on Bishop Street.

In 1894 the house passed to Sir William McLearn, a railway and carting contractor with business premises on Foyle Street, who was also a local magistrate and Mayor of Londonderry in 1901 and again between 1913 and 1915. McLearn was knighted by Queen Victoria on 24th June 1900 and was a patron of Carlisle Road Presbyterian Church. The 1901 census describes Carrickmore House as a first-class dwelling containing 16 rooms, with the south-west outbuilding in use as a stable and coach house. Sir William McLearn continued to live at Carrickmore House until his death in 1918.

By the 1930s the house and its six acres of land had been acquired by the trustees of Magee College, having been gifted to the college by W. J. Hanna, the chairman of the college trustees. The trustees leased the property to William Hyndman, a local merchant. Following his death in 1934, the Hyndman family remained in residence until 1956, after which the house fell vacant. It remained so until the 1970s, with its valuation standing at £65 by the end of the Second Revaluation in 1972. The Ulster Architectural Heritage Society's 1970 guide described Carrickmore House as "a fine two-storey house with basement, standing in its own grounds... almost square in plan, with a small entrance portico and a commanding view over Rosses Bay."

The house was listed in 1979. In 1980 it was converted into a radio studio for BBC Radio Foyle, though the station occupied the site only briefly before relocating to purpose-built premises at the corner of Northland Road and Northland Avenue in 1985. Between 1985 and 1989 the building was converted into lecture and seminar rooms for Magee University, with the works carried out by Ferguson and McIlveen, architects for the Magee Campus Extension Development. During this conversion the former outbuilding to the south-west was demolished and the single-storey modern extension was added. Although a good amount of the original interior fabric has been lost as a result of conversion to teaching accommodation, the exterior retains much of its good-quality Italianate detailing along with some mature planting within the grounds.