Holy Hill House, 78 Ballee Road, Artigarvan, Strabane, Co Tyrone, BT82 0AA

Holy Hill House is a substantial detached country house of 17th-century origin, built around 1670, located in an extensive demesne to the north-east of Strabane in the townland of Hollyhill, parish of Leckpatrick. It is one of the most historically significant domestic buildings in Northern Ireland, with origins in the Ulster Plantation era and strong associations with the Hamilton and Sinclair families across nearly four centuries. The house, its entrance gates and gate piers, coal cellar, and surrounding walling are all included within the listing.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The house is a symmetrical five-bay, three-storey-over-concealed-basement double-pile structure, square on plan, facing east. The roof is hipped, clad in natural slate in an M-profile (slightly sprocketed), with angled clay ridge tiles and roughcast chimneystacks topped with polygonal terracotta pots. External walls are painted roughcast, with a smooth rendered plinth visible at basement level on part of the south elevation. Cast iron gutters are fitted, with internal downpipes not visible on the front elevation.

Windows are generally timber sliding sash throughout, diminishing in size to the upper floors on the front elevation, with various configurations elsewhere.

The principal east-facing elevation is symmetrically arranged around a central entrance door with a lugged sandstone surround and threshold. The entrance comprises double-leaf timber glazed doors with a Dutch-style timber shutter behind, divided horizontally into three sections. Window glazing bars are arranged as 3/3 on the second floor, 6/6 on the first floor, and 9/6 on the ground floor, with all ground-floor windows being replacements. Lean-to additions to either side of the entrance are screened by painted roughcast flanking wing walls. These walls are surmounted by a masonry cap with a decorative scroll at the angle with the main block, terminating in a ball finial at the outer edge. The south wing has a timber and stud double door with a concrete threshold and reveal; the north wing has no door and is currently boarded up.

The south elevation is asymmetrical. The upper two floors on the right-hand side are clad in painted weather slating; there is an 8/8 window to the left, and two 6/6 windows on the ground floor. A modern metal bridge with concrete steps projects from the second window — formerly a door — and passes over the coal cellar. A single-storey lean-to extension to the right has a natural slate roof replacing an earlier glazed roof, and is lit by a dipartite side-hung 12-light window to the left and a 3/3 sash to the right.

The north elevation features a full-height canted bay to the right. Windows to the right of this bay are glazed 3/3 on the second floor, 6/3 on the first floor, and 9/6 on the ground floor, arranged either side of a 9/9 window that extends to ground level with a stone slab threshold. To the left of the bay there is a 6/3 window on the second floor and a single-storey lean-to extension at ground level, similar in character to that on the south elevation but fitted with UPVC gutters.

The rear elevation is irregular, abutted by several extensions. To the left is a double-height gabled extension dating from around 1850, fitted with double-glazed French doors with a large toplight, accessed by four stone steps bridging a ditch, and with three 1/1 windows with horns. At the centre is a one-and-a-half-storey gabled extension linking to an attached outbuilding at the rear; it is accessed from the main block by a short skewed link, from which rises a 20th-century lean-to sanitary extension supported on the right by a straight pier rising from the scullery. The exposed section of the main block has a single window at first and second floor level, to the left of the sanitary extension. The central extension has an original four-pane window to the attic storey and a replacement 3/6 sash window, and is accessed by a timber-sheeted door with brass furniture at the south side, with a further gabled addition beyond. The skewed link has a single 3/6 window; the sanitary extension also has 3/6 windows. The scullery has a timber-sheeted door at its right cheek and two six-light windows.

INTERIOR

A survey of the interior identified a thick wall running between the front and rear rooms within the main square plan of the house. Along this wall were framed openings with shelving or sinks inset, which closely resemble window architraves. These correspond to two openings on each side at first-floor level and one on each side at second-floor level, and are understood to represent the previous front face of the house — in other words, the shell of the original structure survives within the later fabric. The listing notes that several early features remain intact both internally and externally, and that later additions — including modifications made to allow the insertion of windows from Ballymena Castle — add further to the building's architectural interest.

SETTING

Holy Hill House stands within an extensive demesne of lawns, mature parkland, and pasture on undulating ground north-east of Strabane. To the rear is an exceptionally well-preserved farmyard complex built in rubble walling. Access from the road is via wrought and cast iron gates set between square stone rubble gate piers to the west of the house, which formed the former back avenue. Together with the other listed structures on the demesne, the house and its setting represent a rare and important 17th-century group of national significance.

HISTORY

The townland name has changed repeatedly over the centuries, recorded as Balliborne on the 1609 Bodley Map, Balliburny in the 1655–1667 Civil Survey of Ireland, and later as Ballyburny, Holihill (in a survey book of around 1680), and finally Hollyhill. The house name has similarly been recorded as Holyhill, Holihill, Holly Hill, and Holy Hill.

As part of the Ulster Plantation, the lands were held by the first Earl of Abercorn (died 1618), who granted them before 1611 to his younger brother, Sir George Hamilton of Greenlaw. Sir George built a timber house on the estate in 1611, though the Hamiltons resided in Scotland and left the property in the care of others. A Book of Survey and Distribution from around 1680 records that "Ballyburny alias Holihill" had belonged to James Hamilton Esquire, a minor son of Sir George Hamilton the Elder, before 1641, and was distributed to Sir George Hamilton afterwards. The first house was burned in 1641. The property was subsequently granted to the family's agent in the Strabane barony, David Maghee, whose son Captain George Magee sold it to the Reverend John Sinclair. Sinclair had come to Ireland from Caithness and was instituted in the parish of Leckpatrick in 1665–66 and in the parish of Camus in 1668. The house he purchased had been rebuilt after 1641, either by James Hamilton, his son George, David Magee, or his son George. The current structure is understood to date from around 1670. The house narrowly escaped being burned by Jacobite troops retreating from the Siege of Derry.

Sinclair purchased the house with income derived from two parishes. His 1703 memorial, re-erected in Leckpatrick Parish Church of St Patrick, praises his defence of the established church and his persecution of dissenters. The Abercorn papers contain correspondence between the Earl of Abercorn and the Sinclair family from as early as 1749. In a letter dated 14 January 1756, Abercorn wrote to his agent Nathaniel Nisbitt requesting a copy of Sinclair's deed of Holyhill, noting that he did not hold the counterpart. Upon Nisbitt's retirement in 1757, he recommended Sinclair as his replacement, describing him as "a rough honest man." With income from his role as an Abercorn agent, John Sinclair expanded the demesne in the late 1760s. He was succeeded by his son George, who had been apprenticed to a linen merchant; George died in Limerick between 1803 and 1804 and was buried in the old parish graveyard in 1804.

George was succeeded by his nephew James, who served as a Justice of the Peace in both Donegal and Tyrone and took part in parliamentary inquiries in the 1830s and 1840s, including the Devon Commission and the inquiry into the Orange Order, which he held in very low regard. He spoke in favour of Catholic Emancipation at a public meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and freeholders of County Tyrone. In 1810, James planted 1,412 spruce firs, 62 Scots firs, 78 silver and balm of Gilead firs, 1,520 larches, 1,230 ashes, 171 hornbeams, 273 birches, 870 alders, 1,041 beeches, and 509 oaks. He died in 1865 and was succeeded by his son William, a barrister.

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs offer lavish praise of James Sinclair as the only resident proprietor in the parish of Leckpatrick, crediting his agricultural skill and generosity with the prosperity of the local community.

The Townland Valuation Records of the 1820s record the house and offices of James Sinclair Esquire, valued at £25 3s 0d. Griffith's Valuation records Captain James Sinclair as holding the house in fee and lists numerous associated buildings including a porch, main building, basement, rear addition with basement, kitchen, dairy (two entries), granary house, coach house and related structures, fowl house, boiler shed, stable, shed, cow house, a further stable, two offices, and a sawing mill measuring 35 by 21 by 13 feet, described as used only for farming purposes. The mill had a wheel measuring 18 feet by 2 feet 6 inches by 10 inches, an overshot fall of water of 10 to 20 feet, and power applied at the top. The "Saw Mill" continued to be marked on the second and third Ordnance Survey map editions of 1855 and 1906.

The Valuation Revisions show the house remaining in Sinclair ownership with few changes until around 1926. In 1875, the valuation increased from £40 to £43, with a marginal note recording that a laundry had been built three years previously. William Sinclair, son of James, died in 1899 having served as High Sheriff of County Donegal in 1854 and as Deputy Lieutenant of Tyrone from 1876. His grandson William Hugh Montgomery served from 1900 in the consular service in Manila, Boston, and Buenos Aires. During that time his mother sold off most of the estate to its tenants between 1904 and 1905 under the terms of the Land Act of 1903. William subsequently married the American heiress Elizabeth Elliott Hayes. Upon her death in 1957, the estate passed to a distant Sinclair relation, General Sir Alan Adair, who sold many of the heirlooms, destroyed many of the estate records by burning, and sold the property in 1983 to Hamilton Thompson, a chemist from Strabane.