Friends Meeting House, 5 Halfpenny Gate Road, Broomhedge, Moira

Two-storey Quaker meeting house of 1874, which closed in 2000 and is currently undergoing conversion to a dwelling house, designed with some classical features. The building is located on the south side of Halfpenny gate Road, roughly 2.3km north-east of Moira, to the east of a large former Quaker-run agricultural school, founded in 1836, but now largely abandoned. In front of the building is an overgrown garden, and to the east is a newly-built garage. The building is basically rectangular in plan with an off-centre gabled porch projection to north set within a shallow full-height gabled bay to north, and shallow full-height projections to north-east and north-west; to the rear a small single-storey projection was recently removed. The front elevation faces north, and, but for the porch projection on the left side, is symmetrical. Window openings are grouped with single, paired and tripartite arrangements. Most have moulded surrounds with bead-chamfer stopped reveals; these rest on common sills that encircle the building as stringcourses. Further stringcourses encircle the building, intersecting at the levels of the window arch imposts. Directly below each opening is a small cast-iron ventilation grill. Frames are painted timber; these are fixed lights with margin panes; a number of frames are missing. Walls are constructed in rubble fieldstone; below the ground floor stringcourse these are exposed, above they are finished with roughcast render (part removed). Walls rest on a battered plinth; a replacement chamfered red clay brick articulates the junction between the plinth and the upper walling. The building is encircled with broad moulded stringcourses; these merge with matching window surrounds. Missing render reveals that corners and openings are formed in red clay brick. The pitched roof is covered with natural slate. There is a moulded eaves course and rainwater goods are uPVC. To the centre of the ridge there is a new brick chimneystack. The gabled ‘sentry-box’ style porch projection is set to the left side of the north front façade. This is single-storey. The front door opening is semi-circular arched with moulded render surround; the painted timber panelled door has semi-circular headed upper panels. Each side of the porch has a narrow, flat-headed slit window. To the right there is a paired window opening while to the centre of the first floor there is a tripartite arrangement. To the right side of the east façade is the gabled two-storey stair projection; this has centrally positioned window openings, one to ground and one to first floor. The left side is single-storey and has four evenly spaced window openings. The rear south façade has centrally positioned paired window openings. The west façade has a paired window arrangement to the ground floor of the stair projection, but is otherwise an identical, mirror image, of the east façade. The site is protected with temporary site railings.