Ravarnet House, 24 Carnbane Road, Ravernet, County Down, BT27 5NG

Ravarnet House is a detached, three-bay, two-storey former linen merchant's residence on the north side of Carnbane Road, Ravernet, County Down. The property sits within an extensive landscaped site at a level lower than the road. The house incorporates an earlier three-bay, two-storey structure dating from around 1820, which was substantially extended and refaced in 1879 — a datestone bearing that year is present on the building, though currently obscured by creeper — and further extended and refurbished around 1915 to 1920. The result is a building that presents a coherent late 19th-century front elevation and a notable Arts and Crafts interior.

EXTERIOR

The roof is hipped and covered in natural slate, with roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and rolled lead ridges to the hips. Several rendered chimneystacks are topped with decorative terracotta pots, and there are gabled wall-head dormers to the west pitch. The overhanging eaves are supported on shaped modillions and fitted with ogee-moulded metal guttering and metal downpipes. Walling is dry-dash rendered throughout, with smooth rendered corners and a continuous smooth render plat band running between floor levels. Window openings are square-headed with stone sills, rendered reveals, and timber sash windows.

The front (north) elevation is three bays wide and features a two-storey gabled entrance bay with a terracotta finial. This bay has tripartite timber sash windows, while the remaining bays have horizontally-glazed 2/2 timber sash windows with margin lights. To the west cheek of the entrance bay is a square-headed doorway with a moulded cement render surround, a panelled timber door with stop-chamfers and a decorative handle, set beneath a canopy supported on a pair of brackets.

The east side elevation is eight bays wide, with horizontally-glazed timber sash windows, some timber casement windows, and two replacement timber glazed doors. A flat-roofed rear entrance porch abuts this elevation at its south end.

The south rear elevation consists of a pair of two-storey gables, one set back from the other, abutted by a timber-framed conservatory and a screen wall. 6/6 timber sash windows occupy the re-entrant angle.

The west garden elevation is abutted by a two-storey central three-sided canted bay and a two-storey square-plan gabled bay that is fully glazed to the ground floor. All windows on this elevation are multi-pane timber sash windows, and at the south end there are three round-headed door openings fitted with timber French doors.

SETTING

The house stands within its own large landscaped site. A two-storey outbuilding encloses a gravel yard to the east, there is lawn to the west and north, and the site is enclosed to the south by a tall rendered wall to Carnbane Road. A winding gravel drive leads to Carnbane Road at the southwest, entered through a pair of decorative iron gates set on dry-dash rendered piers with accompanying walling. Despite being located in a now considerably suburbanised area, the house retains considerable character, enhanced by its mature planting, entrance gates, and boundary walling.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The house appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833, captioned as 'Ravarnette House', shown as an oblong building to the north-east of Hillsborough with two small outbuildings alongside it. The Townland Valuation of the 1830s records the occupant as James Henderson, described in secondary sources as a linen draper, bleacher, and locally noted poet. The valuation lists a corn mill and flax mill as part of the premises, and the entire site including the dwelling was valued at £26 8s., with the house itself assessed at £11 2s. According to secondary sources, the original house was built in 1789.

By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1861, Henry Hart occupied the property, which was now described as a house, offices, and flour mill stores, held from the Marquis of Downshire and valued at £50 — a substantial increase on the earlier assessment. The second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858 shows no physical alteration to the site since 1833, though the property was by then captioned 'Agnes Vale'. Henry Hart had purchased the site in 1854 and installed looms, developing linen weaving in the village of Ravernet. His son Robert Hart was raised at Ravarnette and later served in the British Foreign Office in China before retiring to Canada, where he named his home Ravarnette Lodge.

In 1871 the flour mill was converted into a scutch mill, and in 1873 John Sinton took over the site and established the Ravarnette Weaving Co. Ltd, operated by Edwin Sinton. A weaving factory was added to the site in 1874. From 1871 onwards the dwelling and its outbuildings were recorded under separate valuation entries; the Ravarnette Weaving Factory was valued at £50 and the mill store at £18, while the house stood at £26. Following the rebuilding work of 1879, the house value rose to £32 by 1889, and the weaving factory's value increased to £75 with the addition of a new boiling house and the incorporation of the scutch mill into its assessment.

John Sinton occupied Ravarnette House until his son Edwin A. Sinton succeeded him in 1907. Edwin purchased the house from the Marquis of Downshire in 1913. The 1901 Census records Edwin A. Sinton (aged 28), a Linen Manufacturer and Quaker, living at the house with his widowed mother (aged 64) and his sister Helena. The house was recorded as a first-class dwelling with 12 rooms, its outbuildings comprising a stable, coach house, harness room, cow house, two calf houses, a pig house, fowl house, boiling house, and barn. By 1911 Edwin Sinton — by then married to his wife Olivia since 1903 — had significantly extended his holdings at Ravarnette to over 25 outbuildings, including multiple stables, cow houses, calf houses, piggeries, fowl houses, sheds, a forge, a laundry, and a motor house.

In 1915 the Annual Revisions reclassified the weaving factory as 'offices, weaving mill, saw mill and store', raising its value dramatically from £75 to £230. By 1921 the house's own valuation had increased to £60. The factory closed in 1920 following the post-First World War slump in the textile industry, and secondary sources indicate the Sinton family left Ravarnette House in the late 1920s, though this is not formally recorded in the Annual Revisions.

The former farmhouse recorded in the census has since been converted into a garage, and the factory buildings have been demolished, with that part of the site redeveloped for residential use. Ravarnet House thus stands as a notable example of the close relationship between domestic and industrial prosperity in the Irish linen trade, its expansion and embellishment directly reflecting the success of the Ravarnette weaving enterprise, and its present character shaped by the industry's subsequent decline. The house was listed in December 1992.