Roden House, 1 Park Street, Hillsborough, Co. Down, BT26 6AL

Roden House is a detached, three-bay, two-storey rendered townhouse built around 1850 on the site of an earlier house, with a later two-storey red brick rear block added around 1890. It stands on the south side of Park Street in Hillsborough, facing north onto Park Lane, with a large walled rear garden and a range of outbuildings. The listing extends to the house, outbuildings, walling, gates and bollards.

EXTERIOR

The house is rectangular on plan, with a screen wall and lean-to wing to the east, and an L-plan range of two-storey outbuildings behind a gated entrance to the west. The roof is a double-pile natural slate construction with a central valley, black clay ridge tiles, parged cement verges, and four rendered red brick profiled chimneystacks rising from each gable and fitted with clay pots. Cast-iron guttering runs to convex moulded eaves courses that return to the gables, with cast-iron downpipes.

The front and side elevations are finished in ruled and lined cement render; the rear elevation is red brick laid in English garden wall bond. Window openings are square-headed throughout, fitted with original 2/2 timber sash windows, some retaining cylinder glass, all with stone sills.

FRONT ELEVATION

The symmetrical five-window-wide north front elevation has a continuous painted stone sill course at first-floor level and moulded architrave surrounds to the ground-floor windows. The centrepiece is a three-centred arched door opening containing a raised and fielded timber panelled door with brass furniture, flanked by a pair of plain sidelights over raised and fielded panels. Slender pilasters with Greek key incision flank the opening and support a lintel cornice, above which sits a textured glazed fanlight with a central glazing bar and a moulded archivolt. The door opens onto a single granite step to the street, with a cobbled front area enclosed by granite bollards supporting iron chains. A tall rendered screen wall with terracotta coping, flush with the façade, continues eastward with a lean-to wing behind.

SIDE AND REAR ELEVATIONS

The east side elevation has an M-profile roofline and is abutted by a lean-to extension to the front block in ruled and lined cement render, with the rear block set back slightly. A round-headed stairhall window opening in the front block contains a 2/2 timber sash window with an incorporated plain fanlight.

The later rear red brick block is narrower than the front block and features a single-storey, three-sided canted bay with a stone cornice to the lead-lined parapet wall and a continuous stone sill course. Around 1990, the left ground-floor bay was enlarged with a concrete lintel and a pair of glazed hardwood French doors opening onto concrete-paved steps down to the garden.

The west elevation comprises two gables, the rear one stepped back behind the front block, with a lean-to rubble stone wing to the ground floor having a natural slate roof, providing rear access and opening into a courtyard. Slender window openings to the right of both gables contain 2/2 timber sash windows. The lean-to has an early 8/4 timber sash window and a glazed timber door with a four-pane window and red brick surrounds. The front block also has a further lean-to glazed conservatory or porch.

SETTING AND OUTBUILDINGS

The house fronts directly onto the street, terminating the north end of Park Lane. To the west, a rubble stone screen wall opens into a paved courtyard via a pair of replacement timber sheeted gates on tall red brick piers. The yard is enclosed to the west by a single-storey rubble stone outbuilding with a natural slate roof and four red brick carriage arches, three of which retain vertically-sheeted double timber doors. The south end of the yard is enclosed by a two-storey rubble stone former coach house, now converted into a self-contained unit, with a single red brick carriage arch of the same type, a further square-headed garage opening, a hipped artificial slate roof, and enlarged window openings fitted with uPVC windows. A large rear walled garden is enclosed by rubble stone walling.

HISTORY

A plan of Hillsborough dating to 1803 shows a building on the current site, and the first Ordnance Survey of 1834 records a large house with a small outbuilding and adjoining garden. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1834–37 describe it as a two-storey dwelling house built of stone, slated and whitewashed. Both the Memoirs and the Townland Valuations of 1834 record the house as occupied by Captain E. Jenkins of the Hillsborough police, with a valuation of £11 4s. By the time of Griffith's Valuation (1856–64), the valuation had risen to £25. The current belief, supported by field inspection, is that the original house was demolished around this period and the present building erected in its place, as the current structure shows no evidence of early 19th-century fabric.

By Griffith's Valuation, the occupant was Mark Wardhaugh, a civil engineer and agent to the Marquis of Downshire, who contracted and carried out work on Lord Downshire's land. Wardhaugh, an Englishman born in Gateshead, occupied the house until 1883 and died on 22nd November 1887. The red brick rear block dates stylistically to the late 19th century, though no corresponding valuation change has been identified to confirm its precise date. Annual Valuations show William J. Henry in occupation from 1883 until 1893, followed briefly by Joseph Stevenson, a Belfast linen merchant.

The Boyd family came into possession of the house in 1903, and it became their family home. Henry J. Boyd worked in the Town Dispensary on Lisburn Street and was also a Justice of the Peace. The family were prosperous and acquired a number of gardens along their side of Park Street between 1903 and 1927. A deed plan in the Downshire Estate papers records that in 1921 Dr William Boyd purchased a plot of land on Park Street for £220 from Lord Downshire. The 1901 Census return for Roden House lists numerous out-offices and farm steadings including a stable, a coach house, a cow house, a dairy, a fowl house and a shed. By 1911, Henry J. Boyd had considerably extended his holdings, with his return comprising two stables, two coach houses, two cow houses, a piggery and three stores.

In 1913, Henry Boyd's son William S. Boyd qualified as a doctor, following his father's path. After the deaths of his father on 29th March 1925 and his mother Annie in 1926, William came into possession of Roden House in 1927. A memorial Lych Gate to Henry Boyd — now listed separately — was erected by public subscription on the path to Hillsborough Cemetery in recognition of his forty years of service at Hillsborough Dispensary. William Boyd is believed to have continued working at the same dispensary.

Roden House was the childhood home of William's son, Arthur Stanley Boyd, born in 1920, who also followed the family tradition. His obituary in the British Medical Journal records that he received his M.D. in 1947 and then entered into partnership with his father in a long-established family practice in Hillsborough, where he continued as a very busy general practitioner until a few days before his death in 1971. A memorial garden on Main Street was erected in his honour. Roden House continues to be occupied by a descendant of the Boyd family.