Laurel Hill, 17 Chapel Road, Ballinderry Upper, Lisburn, County Antrim, BT28 2JF

Laurel Hill is a detached three-bay single-storey house with attic built around 1835, constructed of stone and brick and attached to a former thatched cottage built around 1800. The building is situated on the south side of Chapel Road, Ballinderry Upper, set well back from the road on a slightly elevated site and accessed via a long tree-lined avenue.

The main house faces north and is rectangular on plan. It has a half-hipped natural slate roof with black clay ridge tiles and a pair of symmetrically-placed yellow-brick chimneystacks with octagonal clay pots. The guttering is replacement moulded aluminium to boxed eaves, with cast-iron downpipes. The walls are galleted uncoursed blackstone with redbrick linings to all openings.

The symmetrical front north elevation is four windows wide with a central square-headed door opening. The window openings are square-headed, formed in redbrick with original 6/6 timber sash windows and painted sandstone sills. The central door is an original double-leaf flat-panelled timber door opening onto a sandstone step with a replacement timber trelliced canopy.

The east side elevation is single-bay and one and a half storeys high with rough-cast render, a replacement timber bargeboard, a replacement 3/6 timber sash window to the attic level and an original 6/6 timber sash window to the ground level, both with smooth rendered decorative surrounds. The former thatch dwelling extends the east elevation southwards with decorative rendered surrounds, uPVC windows and a timber door.

The south rear elevation is abutted by the single-storey former thatched house on its east side. It features exposed galleted stone walling with a central three-centred brick arch now filled with a uPVC window. The west side elevation is single-bay and one and a half storeys high with replacement 3/6 timber sash and original 6/6 sash windows, replacement decorative bargeboard and exposed stone walling.

The earlier one-storey house to the rear has lost its original roof and all external and internal fabric. However, the main house retains much of its original character and proportions.

The setting comprises front and rear lawns to the west of the house and a large informal yard to the east with rough-cast rendered outbuildings having natural slate roofs and timber sash or steel casement windows. A double-height barn to the southeast has elaborate king-post trusses to the corrugated iron roof. A long straight bitumac avenue set perpendicular to the road is enclosed by mature trees and encloses a front garden with a pair of swan-neck rendered walls and piers supporting wrought-iron gates, forming a gate screen to the former front avenue. A second set of wrought-iron gates is located at the road side.

Historical context: The rear return of Laurel Hill first appears on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832 as a rectangular building. The Townland Valuation records show that William John Turtle took over the farm and house from Thomas Walkington in 1837. The valuer assigned a rateable value of £7 9s 11d, detailing a class 2b house measuring 60 feet by 20 feet and one storey high, with a cow house still extant and depicted on the 1832 map as an oblong building to the north-east of the house. Subsequent editions of the Ordnance Survey indicate that the current single-storey house was constructed by 1857 and was attached to the former cottage which became its rear return; two additional outoffices were also added to the farmstead by that time. In 1859, Griffith's Valuation valued the house at £12 and noted the presence of four small houses built by Turtle, valued between £0 10s and £1 5s. The valuer observed that Laurel Hill was a "very neat cottage with good approach". There was no further discernible change to the farm on later editions of the Ordnance Survey maps.

Turtle occupied Laurel Hill until 1870 when it was occupied by Isaac C. Turtle, who took over the house and owned the separate dwellings until his death in 1890. A stained glass window in Trinity Church Aghalee was erected to Isaac Turtle's memory by his sister in 1890. The farm was then bought by James Quinn, who took down a number of the houses which had lain vacant for some time. The 1901 census records Quinn (aged 59) as a Presbyterian farmer living at Laurel Hill with his wife Jane (43) and their four children. Quinn employed two farmhands at that time. The building return records the house as a first-class dwelling consisting of 13 inhabited rooms. By 1911, the outoffices were used as a stable, coach house, cow house, piggery, fowl house, boiling house, potato house and barn. Quinn owned the farm until his death in 1921, when his widow Jane Quinn came into possession and resided there until 1930. The single-storey formerly thatched cottage was erected around 1800, and the main house was likely built around 1835, suggesting that Thomas Walkington built the house. At the time of writing in 1996, Laurel Hill was still occupied by a member of the Quinn family. The building was listed in 1988.