Store House, 3 Darachrean Road, Ballinderry Upper, Lisburn, Co Antrim, BT28 2LG

Store House, Darachrean Road, Ballinderry Upper

This complex comprises three adjoining buildings—a three-storey store, a two-storey store, and a three-storey former dwelling—dating from the early 19th century and situated on the south side of a minor road a short distance from the shores of Lough Neagh in Upper Ballinderry. The buildings are arranged in a north-south aligned block along the west side of a farmyard.

The northernmost three-storey store has a pitched natural slate roof with raised gable margins and brick chimneys to each gable. Half-round metal gutters and downpipes are present. The walls are of random rubble, now cement-rendered. All openings have been infilled and rendered over except a replacement sliding timber door to the ground floor of the east elevation and two square openings on the top floor of the same elevation.

The middle building is a two-storey store, five openings wide, with a pitched replacement corrugated metal roof and half-round metal gutters and downpipes. Its walls are of cement-harled random rubble. The ground floor of the west elevation retains two 2/2 timber sliding sash windows, possibly 20th-century insertions. Openings to the ground floor and both floors of the east elevation have been infilled, with internal access via the three-storey store.

The three-storey former dwelling at the south end is aligned east-west and has a pitched natural slate roof with decorative bargeboard to the west gable. Half-round metal gutters and downpipes are present, with rebuilt brick chimneys on the east gable and north eaves. Walls are cement-harled. Ground floor openings have been infilled. The upper floors retain replacement top-opening timber casement windows with sandstone and cement cills.

The complex is shown on the 1832 Ordnance Survey six-inch map alongside 'Store Quay' on the Lough Neagh shore, a short distance to the west. The quay appears again on the 1858 map, though several buildings within the complex are shown as roofless shells by this date. The main north-south aligned block incorporating the store appears on these and subsequent maps. The 1862 Griffith Valuation identifies Reverend John H Birtill as occupier of a 'house and offices' under lease from the Marquis of Hertford, with a rateable valuation of £6—the highest of any property in the townland, indicating relative prosperity. According to the current owner, the complex was once used for the transit of agricultural produce landed at the nearby quay, and the two-storey building between the store and house was formerly used as a Moravian Chapel. The store quay has since been subsumed by a modern sand extraction processing plant. The level of Lough Neagh was also lower in the 1850s and is now substantially further from the store than was originally the case.

Although the original walls survive, alterations including infilling of window openings and cement rendering detract from the buildings' original character, and they do not meet the criteria for listing.