Barn with, cellars at Holy Hill House, 78 Ballee Road, Artigarvan, Strabane, Co Tyrone, BT82 0AA

Barn with Cellars at Holy Hill House, Artigarvan

This is a well-detailed agricultural outbuilding dating from around 1810, forming part of an extensive farm complex within the demesne of Holy Hill, an estate with Plantation-era origins situated north-east of Strabane. The building is a two-storey, multi-bay range, rectangular on plan and facing south, constructed in limewashed rubblestone over a painted contrasting base course beneath a pitched natural slate roof laid in diminishing courses. It sits within an enclosed farmyard as part of an east-west range, attached at its east gable to the adjacent yardman's house, with the yardman's house occupying the centre of the group. The building shares group value with the other listed structures at Holy Hill, and together the outbuildings reflect the development of farming techniques required for the efficient running of a large estate.

The principal south-facing elevation has four ventilation slits along the loft storey. At the left, four concrete steps lead up to a door. At ground level there are three small painted camber-headed timber doors, and centrally a square-headed pair of painted timber double doors with timber and iron lintels, giving access to the coach house. All openings are finished with painted tongued-and-grooved sheeted doors unless noted otherwise. The east gable is abutted by the yardman's house. The north elevation has three ventilation slits at loft storey level and one timber-framed window with mesh. At ground floor level on the north side, two projecting gabled porches with pitched natural slate roofs each contain a door with a timber lintel, and a further camber-headed door is positioned between them. A modern single-storey lean-to milk house extension with aluminium rainwater goods has been added to the left on this elevation. The right (west) gable is blank and retains the remains of a lime pit. Cast-iron rainwater goods serve the south elevation; painted aluminium U-profile guttering serves the north, with the downpipe position approximately marking the division between the barn and the yardman's house.

Internally, the building retains its original cellars, which have lobbied access arrangements and vaulted ceilings. According to the current owner, the four small doors were used for putting potatoes into the cellar for storage.

The building stands within a concrete farmyard setting to the west of the main house, itself set within a demesne comprising parkland, pasture and gardens.

The outbuilding is recorded on all three editions of the Ordnance Survey map (1833, 1854, and 1905). Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 lists the following outbuildings on the estate with measurements: two dairies, a granary house, a coach house and associated structures, a fowl house, a boiler shed, two stables, a shed, a cow house and two offices.

The Holy Hill estate has a long documented history of improvement and cultivation. According to secondary sources, the house was enlarged and the estate improved during the 1730s and 1760s by John Sinclair, who owned the property from 1718 to 1770. His son George, who had trained as a linen merchant and owned the estate from 1770 to 1804, continued this work and established a mill after 1779. Under the ownership of George's nephew James, a Justice of the Peace, from 1804 to 1865, the estate was again extensively cultivated and many estate buildings were erected, including the walled garden. In 1810 James planted a large and precisely recorded programme of woodland planting: 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. James's son William, a former High Sheriff of County Donegal in 1854 who became Deputy Lieutenant of Tyrone in 1876, also probably improved the estate until his death in 1896, after which it is considered likely that subsequent owners undertook no new projects.

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs praise James Sinclair extensively as the only resident proprietor in the parish of Leckpatrick, commending his "skill in every department of agriculture" and his generosity in supplying timber from the Holy Hill woods for his tenants' houses and farming implements, and trees and quickset from its nurseries for their gardens and fences. The Memoirs also record that Sinclair achieved six guineas an acre for his turf bog without charging his tenants, that turnips had long been cultivated with great success at Holy Hill, that irrigation had been employed there to notable effect, that clay was burned for manure, that meadows were watered successfully, and that Sinclair was one of the very few to have used oxen in husbandry. These accounts attest to Holy Hill's prominence as a model agricultural estate in the region.

John Sinclair commissioned William Starrat in 1736 to draw up a map of the estate, though this omitted all buildings. An estate map in the Abercorn papers dated 1804 captions the property as "Holly Hill George Sinclair Esq." but similarly omits buildings. The outbuildings are considered likely to date from one of the major periods of development undertaken by the Sinclair family, though their vernacular character makes precise dating difficult.