8 Bushfield Road, Moyrusk, Moira, Craigavon, County Down, BT67 0JA

8 Bushfield Road, Moyrusk, Moira — Edwardian Farmhouse, 1909

This is a well-proportioned and handsomely detailed two-storey, three-bay Edwardian dwelling, built in 1909 to replace an earlier building on the same site. It stands prominently at the roadside on Bushfield Road, approximately 1.5 miles east of Maghaberry, in the townland of Moyrusk. Originally constructed as the principal house for a modest farm business, it represents an unusual farmhouse type for this rural location, and retains its original Edwardian character both externally and largely throughout its interior. The listing extends to the house itself, together with its boundary walling, gates, and railings.

Architectural Description

The house follows an L-shaped plan, with various additions to the rear. The roof is covered in natural slate with terracotta ridge tiles and finials, and plain timber bargeboards and fascia boards. The chimneys are built in yellow brick with a dog-tooth course, cornicing, and clay pots. Rainwater goods are cast metal. Walls are finished in ruled-and-lined smooth cement render, with a projected plinth and quoins.

Windows throughout are 15-over-1 timber sliding sashes with horns, set in moulded surrounds with stone cills. The principal entrance door is a replacement timber door fitted within a wide semi-circular headed opening; it is six-panelled with bolection moulding, raised and pointed. It is flanked by etched sidelights and a round-headed fanlight, with a hood moulding and moulded head-stops above.

The principal elevation is asymmetrically arranged. The front door sits centrally, with a single window above it at first-floor level; this bay rises to a narrow segmental pediment carrying a datestone that breaks through the eaves line. To the right of the entrance is a two-storey gabled canted bay; to the left is a two-storey gabled box bay with two windows to the front flanked by narrow side windows. The left gable is asymmetrically composed and clearly shows the differing roof pitches between the front and rear sections of the house. A centrally located projected chimney stack breaks through the eaves on this gable, with single windows at ground and first-floor levels to the left.

The rear elevation is also asymmetrically arranged. To the right, a single-storey lean-to extension abuts the main body, with two windows on its north face. To the left, a two-storey return abuts the rear; the right face of this return has an irregular arrangement of various window types, while the left face is flush with the right gable and treated as a considered composition. The north gable end of the return is further abutted by a subordinate two-storey extension, three windows deep, of modern construction but matching in style and proportions. The right gable is asymmetrically arranged, with a central projected chimney stack breaking through at eaves level, and four openings extending uniformly across the façade of the return to the right. A secondary entrance on this elevation, located right of centre, has a replacement timber door with a shallow canopy on corbel brackets.

Setting

The house sits prominently at the roadside. To the east, it is bounded by a low parapet wall surmounted by decorative iron railings, with cast-iron gate piers. On the opposite, east side of the road, a low rubble stone wall with coping carries matching railings and a gate. The grounds to the east and south are well-maintained gardens. To the rear there is an expansive yard with a modern stable block and agricultural units, beyond which lies open rural landscape.

Historical Background

The site has a long history of occupation. An earlier dwelling on this spot first appeared on the first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1832–33, shown as an oblong building in the townland of Moyrusk. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1837 record that the holding was then occupied by a Mr John Wardle, and that the house stood near the site of a fort which had by that time been long destroyed and lay buried beneath Wardle's meadows. By 1832–33 the house had two small outbuildings, but these appear to have been removed before the second-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1858, on which the building is shown as a single oblong structure.

Griffith's Valuation of 1859 records the building as a 'caretaker's house', valued at £6 10s., and occupied by a Mr Alexander Crawford, who held it from the Marquis of Hertford. Crawford in turn let three smaller houses on the property to lodgers, valued at between 10s. and £1 5s. each. Crawford remained at Moyrusk until 1876, when a Mr Thomas Young took possession of the house and the smaller dwellings, which he continued to let to various occupants. In 1879 Young erected a new outbuilding on the site, raising the property's rateable value to £8. He remained until 1893, when the main house fell vacant, though the smaller dwellings continued to be occupied by lodgers. Around 1895, a Mrs Isabella Young came into possession of the main house, and it continued to change hands until approximately 1905, when a Mr Henderson Ritchie took over, purchasing the property outright in 1906.

Under Ritchie's ownership, the original house was taken down around 1906 and replaced with the present Edwardian dwelling, completed in 1909 and named Moyrusk House. The smaller dwellings on the site, which had been falling into dilapidation, were cleared by 1905 so that only the main house remained. The 1901 Census does not record the original house directly, but does confirm that Henderson Ritchie was living in the townland of Moyrusk at that time and working as a farmer.

In 1912 the farm passed to a Mr Henry Hunter, a Presbyterian farmer who lived at Moyrusk House with his wife Mary and their infant daughter Catherine. The 1911 census building return classifies Moyrusk House as a first-class dwelling with 15 inhabited rooms and six outbuildings, including a stable, coach house, dairy, potato house, and store — indicating a modest but well-equipped farm at that date. Also in 1912, Hunter constructed a large L-shaped outbuilding to the rear of the house, first visible on the fourth-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1920–21, which resulted in the expansion of the farm and an increase in its rateable value to £14. Hunter continued to occupy the farm until the end of the Annual Revisions in 1928. That large L-shaped outbuilding has since been replaced by the modern stable block and barn now standing to the north-west of the house. An extension was added to the rear return of the house at some point between 1920 and 1973, when it first appears on the current Ordnance Survey map.

Moyrusk House remains in residential use and is in a good state of repair.