Building at Burrell's Folly, (to west of) Burrell's Glen, Omagh Road, Drumquin, Co Tyrone, BT78 4QX

Building at Burrell's Folly, Omagh Road, Drumquin, Co Tyrone

A two-storey, four-bay stone house built around 1830 as offices and attendant building to Burrell's Folly, now vacant and in use as a farm building. The house stands to the south of Drumquin Village, rectangular on plan and facing north, with a lower two-storey extension to the west. The pitched roof is clad in natural slate with stone corbelled eaves, and dressed stone chimneystacks rise from the gables. Walling is lime rendered over random rubble stone construction, with dressed stone quoins visible beneath. Rainwater goods have been removed, though metal brackets remain.

Windows are largely missing or boarded over, with only remains of timber-framed windows surviving; stone cills are present. Doors are gone, some blocked with wooden pallets. The principal north elevation facing the yard is asymmetrical, with four bays at ground floor level accessed by various openings, some enlarged and supported on steel or timber lintels. At the extreme right end, an external flight of stone steps supported on a cast-iron column leads to a loading door. The left gable is abutted by the remains of a single-storey rubble stone byre, now roofless and overgrown. The rear south elevation facing the road contains four equally spaced window openings to each floor, the majority infilled with rubble stone and featuring stone cills. To the right, a lower outbuilding comprises two door openings and a window opening to ground floor and two window openings to first floor on its yard-facing elevation. The road-facing south elevation is of coursed random rubble with two infilled window openings. Further to the right are the remains of a roofless rubble stone structure with fireplace and chimneybreast to its south wall. Wall heads are heavily covered with ivy growth.

The internal arrangement of rooms and fireplaces indicates the building combined workers' dwellings with storage and agricultural use. The house bounds the south side of a triangular site, set at a skew alongside a small stream immediately to the south, which is bridged by a country lane. The internal yard is accessed at the east end by a pair of wrought-iron gates. The west side of the yard is bounded by a high coursed random rubble stone wall with a square-headed opening formed with heavy fieldstone lintel leading to an overgrown paddock, possibly a former garden.

The site is captioned 'Burn's Folly' on the first edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1833. The building first appears on the second edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1854 (where the site is captioned 'Burrel's Folly'), replacing an earlier building positioned to the south of the plot and set perpendicular to the main house. Historical records indicate Edward Sproule Esq as the leaseholder, with the site recorded as property of Henry Echlin, James A and Frederick Boyle Esquires. Griffith's Valuation of the 1850s-1860s valued the buildings at £13 15s 0d, with this revised to £15 0s 0d in the Annual Revisions, remaining until 1908 when the value fell dramatically to £2. Local historical sources describe this as a ruined farmhouse of 1779 with extensive outbuildings, once home to the Sproule family. The main house no longer stands; only these former offices remain. The building has lost much of its historic fabric and is now in poor condition.