Duneight House, 34 Green Road, Lisburn, County Down, BT27 5LY

Duneight House

Duneight House is a symmetrical detached two-storey stucco-fronted dwelling built around 1830, facing southeast, with an earlier two-storey rendered farmhouse of around 1750 incorporated as a rear return. The rear section was extended around 1860 and the whole property was extensively refurbished around 1900, at which point the front entrance porch was added. The building sits within its own grounds, set perpendicular to Green Road on its south side, and retains a range of outbuildings to the south and west along with its rural setting.

The principal front elevation presents three bays over two storeys in a late Victorian formal style, though it encloses a much earlier structure to the rear. The combination of elegant proportions and decorative Greek-style detailing makes it a fine example of a mill manager's house that was developed progressively during the 18th and 19th centuries in association with an adjacent bleaching mill.

Exterior

The roof is pitched natural slate with roll-moulded black clay ridge tiles, concealed behind a parapet wall with a moulded cornice. A pair of rendered chimneystacks with cement coping sits at either gable end, with a lead valley behind the front parapet wall. Cast-iron guttering and downpipes serve the rear and return elevations. The walling to the front is ruled and lined cement render, with rough-cast render to the side and rear elevations, rusticated render quoins, and a moulded render plinth course.

Window openings are square-headed throughout the front elevation, with painted masonry sills and render surrounds fitted with timber sash windows. The ground floor is treated with banded rustication and the first floor has a continuous sill band. Window openings on both floors have moulded architrave surrounds with a Greek key frieze and dentilated cornice over, flanked by scrolled foliate console brackets to the ground floor. All windows are horizontally glazed 2/2 timber sash windows with ogee horns.

A flat felt-covered roof porch projects from the front elevation, supported on engaged panelled corner piers carrying a plain entablature. The porch has a large fixed multi-pane timber window to the front and a flat-panelled timber door to the north cheek with brass door furniture, opening onto a nosed stone platform leading to a tarmac forecourt area.

The south gable has a single off-centre window opening detailed in the same manner as the first floor of the front elevation. The north gable matches the south gable and continues a further three bays wide into the two-storey elevation of the rear return, which has 6/6 timber sash windows with shaped render surrounds and painted masonry sills.

The rear elevation is abutted by the two-storey return at the north end, with the L-plan enclosing what was formerly a rear yard. This space is now filled by a lean-to extension abutting the remainder of the rear elevation, and a modern lean-to glazed conservatory connecting the extension to the return. The rear elevation has a central round-headed stairhall window containing a single-pane timber sash window with coloured margin lights, along with a further window opening with a shaped render surround and a horizontally glazed 2/2 timber sash window. The L-plan return has 8/8 timber sash windows with shaped render surrounds and masonry sills. Its roof is hipped natural slate with a rebuilt red brick chimneystack topped with octagonal clay pots rising from the rear elevation.

Setting

The house sits within its own grounds perpendicular to Green Road, with a large front and side lawn enclosed to the road by a rubblestone wall and a pair of curved entrance screens with wrought-iron gates on rendered piers. The west entrance gates give rear access via a tarmac drive to a small paved yard, served by a single rendered outbuilding with a pitched natural slate roof, steel casement windows, and a sheeted door to a loft at the north gable. A further two-storey L-plan range of outbuildings lies to the west, with a hipped natural slate roof, steel casement windows, and rough-cast rendered walling.

Historical Background

The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1833 depicts an L-shaped building on the current site, though the property is not named until the second edition of 1858. The map also shows two large outbuildings to the west of the house recorded as Bleach Mills. By 1858 the bleach mill is confirmed within the largest outbuilding on the site, and across successive Ordnance Survey editions from 1833 to 1920 it was continuously enlarged, eventually being recorded as a Flax Mill on the fourth edition map of 1920.

The Ordnance Survey Memoirs record that Duneight House and the mills were owned by the Marquis of Downshire, with a Mr. William Hunter as tenant in 1837. The mill was described as erected in 1833, with a waterwheel 26 feet in diameter and 5 feet in breadth, a breast wheel with a 3-foot fall of water, machinery of wood and iron, and three pairs of beetles.

The Townland Valuation of 1834 records William Hunter as caretaker of Duneight on behalf of the Marquis of Downshire. The house was described as a two-storey first-class building of cut stone measuring 78 by 28 feet and valued at £10 13s. 10d. The extensive out offices included a stable, bleach mill, furnace house, wash and boiling house, engine house, and drying loft, bringing the total site valuation to £42 18s. 7d.

Griffith's Valuation of 1861 records the house at the increased value of £13, by which time the rear return had been constructed. Field inspection suggests that the Victorian features, including the windows of the larger house, were added during the same period. In 1861 the house passed to a Mr. Robert Morrow, who let it to the Reverend Phineas Whiteside, Minister at Legacurry Presbyterian Church, who resided there until his death on 7 September 1865. The house then fell vacant until 1876 when it was occupied by a William J. Henry, followed by William D. Jameson in 1883. It was briefly vacant again before being occupied by Mr. Andrew Kidd in 1886, then by Andrew John Morrow, who purchased the property outright in 1890.

The 1901 Census records Andrew John Morrow, aged 43, as a Presbyterian farmer and rate collector, living at Duneight with his wife Jane and their three children. The house was described as a first-class dwelling of nine rooms, with out offices including a stable, coach house, cow house, and dairy. Annual Revisions record that Andrew Morrow rebuilt the house around 1900 following fire damage, at which point the Edwardian features including the entrance porch were presumably constructed. Morrow let the house to an Andrew W. Watson around 1910, and by 1920 it was occupied by Flax Society Limited. That company was dissolved in 1924 following the post-First World War slump in the market, after which the property came into the possession of Mr. Isaac Logan, who resided at Duneight until at least 1929.

Secondary sources add further detail to the industrial history of the site. Rankin records that Alexander Hunter of Dunmurry built a beetling mill at Duneight in 1833 for the Marquis of Downshire, and that in 1836 Hunter left Duneight to his newly married son William Steen Hunter, who became an esteemed linen merchant and bleacher. Green notes the existence of a dilapidated corn mill at the site, and the Townland Revisions mention a corn kiln in the area, though it is unclear whether this was part of the Duneight estate. Green also records that in 1845 the bleach mill was advertised for sale, stated to be capable of bleaching 25,000 pieces per year. Rankin, however, records that Duneight was not sold until 1862, attributing this to increasing competition among large linen merchants in the Lagan Valley.

Duneight House was listed in 1985, when it was described as a three-bay symmetrical front with plaster classical detailing and characterised as a remodelling of an earlier house. In 1996 it was noted that only the rear part of the house was habitable due to reroofing and renovation work to address dry rot. The lime render was repaired by the current owner in 2011 and 2012.