42 Belfast Road, Glenavy, County Antrim, BT29 4HQ

A two-storey, three-bay farmhouse with outbuildings erected around 1850, substantially modified and extended around 1940. The building sits directly off Belfast Road, 1.5 miles east of Glenavy village, in an area of productive agricultural land between the 100 and 300 foot contours.

The house is constructed of rendered brick with dry-dashed render and smooth bands, plinth course and surrounds to openings. It has a pitched natural slate roof with clay ridge tiles; the later canted bay to the east is roofed with a hipped rolled-lead roof. Timber barge boards finish the gable ends. The rendered brick chimneys retain one terracotta pot, with uPVC replacement rainwater goods. Windows are 2/2 timber sliding sash with horns and horizontal glazing bars, set in painted stone cills; the front door is a replacement plain timber door.

The principal south-facing elevation is asymmetrically arranged with a gable-ended front porch located left of centre. The porch is smoothly rendered with windows to the east and south faces and door to the west. Ground and first floor windows are uniformly arranged across the left-hand side (four windows wide), while the later right bay features a single canted bay window. The left gable is blank with decorative rendering to the gable head and a chimney rising from the apex. The rear elevation is asymmetrically arranged with a centrally located gabled rear porch flanked by irregularly arranged and largely replaced or altered ground and first floor windows. The right gable contains two ground floor windows matching the detailing of the left gable.

To the left of the main house stands a former stable block with hay loft over. The setting is adjacent to the road on the south side with historic and modern agricultural buildings to the west and north, beyond which lies rural landscape. A modern detached house is located nearby to the east.

Historical Background

The parish of Glenavy comprises a low-lying productive agricultural area to the east of Lough Neagh. The area was shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 as dotted with cottages and farmsteads, and has remained largely agricultural to the present day. The house, together with a barn to the rear and small outbuilding to the west, first appears on the 1858 Ordnance Survey map.

Griffith's Valuation of 1862 lists Samuel Bryans as the occupier. The farm was leased from the Marquess of Hertford with buildings valued at £5. Bryans leased over 22 acres with the house and occupied additional plots elsewhere in the townland. Samuel Bryans died in 1868, leaving the farm to his son William with his will making specific provision that "the under part of the lower room of my dwelling house" pass to his wife Isabella for her lifetime, reverting to William upon her death.

In the Belfast Newsletter of 11 February 1885, the farm was advertised for sale by auction, noting "There is a good Two-Storey House on the Property, and the Lands are of prime quality, with an ample supply of water." By the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1901–2, further outbuildings had been added including a single-storey barn to the west of the house, which remains present.

The house retained a whitewashed vernacular appearance until around 1940 when it underwent substantial renovations. It is believed that the eastern bay was added at this time. Although interesting as an example of an enlarged traditional farmhouse, better examples are listed in the area.