Stable for Coach Horses, at Holy Hill House, 78 Ballee Road, Artigarvan, Strabane, Co. Tyrone, BT82 0AA

Stable for Coach Horses, Holy Hill House, Artigarvan, near Strabane, County Tyrone

This is a vernacular stable building dating from around 1810, forming part of the extensive farm complex within the demesne of Holy Hill House, which has Plantation-era origins. The listing covers the stables, the attached boiler house, and associated walling.

The building is two storeys and two bays in plan, rectangular, and faces south. It sits at the southern end of the farmyard of Holy Hill House, to the north-east of Strabane town. A single-storey lean-to boiler house is attached to the east side. The walls throughout are limewashed rubble stone with a painted contrasting base course, and the roofs are pitched natural slate with slate eaves. A metal weather vane was added to the apex around the year 2000. Rainwater goods are cast iron on the north elevation and painted aluminium on the south; window settings are timber-framed unless otherwise noted.

The north (entrance) elevation has a painted tongue-and-groove sheeted door, a replacement eight-over-eight sash window to its right, and a timber louvred window at first-floor level, with its head at eaves level. A further range of single-storey outbuildings abuts the far right end of this elevation. The east elevation has a small camber-headed multi-pane window at ground floor — with voussoirs visible beneath the limewash — and a central ventilation loop at loft level; the single-storey boiler house abuts the left side of this elevation. The south elevation has five horizontal openings at mid level: four are equally spaced, with a fifth set further to the left. The west gable has both a timber louvred window and a multi-paned timber-framed window at ground floor, and a painted tongue-and-groove sheeted door at first floor giving access to the hay loft.

The attached boiler house has a natural slate roof and limewashed rubble stone walls. Its north elevation has a large boarded window opening.

Inside the stable building, the original marked cast metal stalls survive, and these are of particular note.

The building sits at the southern end of the farmyard, with a small lawn to the south enclosed by rubble stone walling. Holy Hill House and its associated outbuildings occupy an established demesne with lawns, mature parkland, and farmland on undulating ground to the north-east of Strabane.

The building is recorded on all three editions of the Ordnance Survey map (1833, 1854, and 1905). Griffith's Valuation of 1856–64 lists the outbuildings of the estate as including 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 history of the Holy Hill estate reaches back to the Plantation period. 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, identifies the property as "Holly Hill George Sinclair Esq." but again shows no buildings. The estate is thought to have been cultivated and the house enlarged during the 1730s and 1760s by John Sinclair, who owned it from 1718 to 1770. His son George, who had been apprenticed as a linen merchant and owned the estate from 1770 to 1804, continued to cultivate it, and a mill is likely to have been established after 1779. It was under the ownership of George's nephew James, JP, from 1804 to 1865, that the estate was most extensively developed: many of the estate buildings were erected during his tenure, including the walled garden. James's son William — formerly High Sheriff of County Donegal in 1854 and later Deputy Lieutenant of Tyrone in 1876 — likely continued to improve the estate until his death in 1896, after which further new building projects are thought to have been unlikely.

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs are notably complimentary about James Sinclair, describing him as "the only resident proprietor" in the parish of Leckpatrick, and praising his "skill in every department of agriculture [which] enabled him to suggest the most effectual means of improvement, whilst his liberality induced him to supply in a great measure the means. The woods of Holyhill yielded timber for [his tenants'] houses and farming implements and its nurseries provided quicks and trees for their gardens and fences, to ask for which was as great a source of satisfaction to the donor as to receive it would have been to others. It would afford a good practical lesson to many of our proprietors to visit these newly formed farms." (Memoirs, p.119.)

From inspection, the farmyard appears to have been largely constructed in a single phase of improvement, with some later additions. While the vernacular character of the buildings makes precise dating difficult, their appearance is consistent with an early 19th-century date, supported by the Ordnance Survey Memoirs' account of James Sinclair's agricultural improvements following his arrival in 1804.

The building retains its vernacular style, scale, and proportions, and has been well maintained, with only isolated sympathetic replacements where necessary. It has group value with the other listed buildings within the Holy Hill estate, and as part of that group the outbuildings collectively reflect the improvements made to support the efficient running of a large estate.