Ashfield, 106 Ballinderry Road, Upper Ballinderry, Lisburn, County Antrim, BT28 2NW

Ashfield is a symmetrical, detached, three-bay, two-storey house with attic, built in stone and brick, originally constructed around 1760 and substantially modified during the 19th century, with a polychromatic brick porch added around 1910. It sits at the end of a long lane on the north side of Ballinderry Road, Upper Ballinderry, facing south, and is rectangular on plan. The house crosses the Lisburn to Antrim railway line and is set within its own grounds. A single-bay, two-storey rear return is attached to the back of the main block. The building combines classical proportions with Edwardian internal and external embellishments, and forms part of a prosperous rural farm holding of considerable architectural interest, with a history spanning over 150 years.

The roof is hipped natural slate with rolled lead ridges. Two symmetrically placed yellow brick chimneystacks with profiled mouldings and dog-tooth detail carry clay pots. Replacement ogee-moulded cast-iron guttering on iron brackets runs along a red brick eaves course, with cast-iron downpipes below. The main walls are galleted rubblestone with brick linings to all openings. Window openings are square-headed, formed in red brick painted white, and fitted with original six-over-six timber sash windows with cylinder glass and painted masonry sills.

The symmetrical south-facing front elevation is five windows wide, with a central polychromatic brick entrance porch abutting it. The porch is square on plan, built in yellow brick laid in Flemish bond, with a moulded plinth course in black and red brick, a black and red brick course at impost level, and a continuous moulded black brick hood moulding. The porch has a single window opening to the right cheek, a pair of window openings to the front, and a door opening to the left cheek. All openings are segmental-headed with stop-chamfered reveals and black and red brick keystones. The windows are single-pane timber sashes with coloured margin lights, ogee horns, and a shared masonry sill with decorative detailing. The entrance is via a replacement timber panelled door with a segmental-headed overlight, set on a stone step. Above the porch, a polychromatic brick cornice sits below a stone coping with a decorative cast-iron grille over, and the whole is surmounted by a timber-frame conservatory with a hipped natural slate roof.

The west side elevation is two windows wide and features a single square-plan bay window with a fixed-pane timber window and a diminutive hipped slate roof. The east side elevation is also two windows wide.

The rear elevation is abutted by an off-centre, single-bay, two-storey part-rendered return and a single-storey rubblestone former dairy to the east. The first floor has original six-over-six timber sash windows. The ground floor of the west bay has paired single-pane timber sash windows, while the centre has a segmental-headed red brick opening fitted with replacement paired four-over-four timber sash windows on a concrete sill. The return has horizontally-glazed two-over-two timber sash windows to its left cheek at first floor level, and a replacement timber glazed door to its right cheek opening into a sunken gravel rear yard.

The house is set within landscaped grounds. A gravel front area fronts a lawn and leads along the west elevation to an elevated rear farmyard. The farmyard is lined with single and two-storey rubblestone outbuildings with pitched natural slate roofs, red brick window linings, and original timber casement and sash windows with sheeted doors. The two-storey north range has a windbreaker entrance porch with an early flush timber door. The single-storey range to the west has been re-roofed in natural slate and retains an original yellow brick chimneystack to its south gable, matching those on the main house. The bitmac driveway curves to the southwest and is entered through a pair of decorative cast-iron gates on rendered piers with pyramidal capstones. The front garden is enclosed by a rubblestone wall. The range of outbuildings to the south yard enhances the overall grouping, and one of the farm buildings to the north still retains features of its former use as a labourers' dwelling, including a small entrance hall and an exterior porch.

The first Ordnance Survey map of the Ballinderry area, dated 1832, shows a small square building on the site of the current house. The former dairy and barn at the rear first appear on the same map as a large oblong building extending north from the back of the house, and the northern range of out offices also appears as an oblong structure. The Townland Valuation of around 1835 records the house and offices valued at £13 14s, with the house measuring 52 feet by 27 feet, suggesting the building had already been enlarged before that survey. By the time of Griffith's Valuation in 1859, a Mr Robert Frazer had taken possession, the house was valued at £18, and it appeared considerably enlarged from its 1832 footprint. At that time Frazer had converted the northern stretch of outbuildings into four separate dwellings, valued between 10 shillings and £1, which between 1863 and 1929 were occupied by numerous tenants who presumably worked the farm. In 1890, Frazer's son William John Frazer acquired the property. The two-storey rear return had been built before 1900, as it first appears on the third edition Ordnance Survey map of 1900–01. The 1901 Census records William Frazer, a 47-year-old Presbyterian farmer, living at Ashfield with his wife Anna Maria (aged 35) and their two sons, in a first-class dwelling of ten inhabited rooms, with a large number of out offices including the dairy house. In 1905 a Mr Hugh English briefly held the farm, but by 1909 a Mr William Henry Quinn, a local Guardian for Ballyscolly, occupied the house with his wife Charlotte and their four children. Quinn remained until 1919, when a Ms Judge became the last occupant recorded in the Annual Revisions, which ended in 1929. The Edwardian porch was installed around 1910. Field inspection suggests a late 18th-century construction date based on the typology of the area and surviving early interior elements, though the rear outbuildings may predate the house itself.

Ashfield House and its rear return were listed in 1985. Renovations have since been carried out in 1988 and again in 2003, retaining much of the original fabric with sympathetically added elements.