Ashmount Cottage, 134 Hillhall Road, Ballymullan, Lisburn, County Down, BT27 5JQ

Ashmount Cottage is a detached single-storey rendered house built around 1830 and situated along the south side of Hillhall Road in Ballymullan. The building is now empty and boarded up. It was originally constructed as a thatched vernacular dwelling but received extensive decorative embellishment during the early twentieth century. Despite these decorative details adding character to the local area, the building has undergone significant twentieth-century alteration and has suffered considerable deterioration, making it unsuitable for listing.

The house is rectangular in plan, facing north with a projecting gabled front entrance porch and a lean-to rear projection. The pitched roof is covered in natural slate with roll-moulded terracotta ridge tiles and three redbrick chimneystacks, the western stack being profiled and rendered. Guttering and downpipes are cast iron, with the guttering ogee-moulded and running to exposed rafter feet.

The external walls are ruled and lined cement rendered with rusticated soldier quoins. The front elevation bears raised render lettering spelling "ASHMOUNT COTTAGE" and is three windows wide. All window openings are square-headed with architrave surrounds, painted masonry sills, and single-pane timber sash windows. The gabled entrance porch features decorative timber bargeboard, rusticated soldier quoins, a round-headed window opening to the front, and an early twentieth-century timber panelled and glazed door to the west cheek. The east and west gables are blank, with remnants of carved timber brackets visible at the eaves. The rear elevation is abutted by a lean-to redbrick projection with a timber sheeted door to the east cheek.

A small front garden enclosed by hedging with an iron pedestrian gate fronts the road. The building is set close to the road behind a hedgerow. A range of late nineteenth-century single-storey rendered outbuildings stands to the west, featuring pitched natural slate or corrugated asbestos roofs, pebbledash rendered walls, timber casement windows, and sheeted timber doors.

Historical records show the cottage first appearing on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1834 as a single oblong building. The 1861 Griffith's Valuation records it occupied by Peter Reid, a farmer, and valued at £2, let by the Marquis of Hertford. Census returns of 1901 describe it as a second-class dwelling comprising three rooms with a thatched roof. Peter Reid, aged 78 at the 1901 census, occupied the cottage with his wife Eliza (75) and daughter Maggie, a mill worker. Reid possessed farm buildings including a stable, cow house, fowl house, and barn. He remained at the cottage until his death in 1903, leaving the house to his widow in his will and dividing effects of £50 among his four children. The 1911 Census records Elizabeth Reid, then aged 87, residing at the cottage alone. The thatch is no longer documented after 1911, though the exact date of its replacement with slate is unknown. The Ordnance Survey map of 1963 indicates the western outbuilding had been constructed between 1920 and 1963. The building has lain abandoned for some considerable time and has fallen into a state of disrepair.