4 Meeting House Road, Aghacarnan, Upper Ballinderry, Lisburn, Co. Antrim, BT28 2NN

This is a one and a half storey, three bay, thatched house located south-facing on Meeting House Road near Upper Ballinderry, overlooking the main road across a lawn. It now has a central hallway but retains the original lobby entry at the east end, and importantly preserves the original gable hearth position and two early forms of roof construction.

Documentary evidence shows the house existed in the early 19th century, but it is likely much older, possibly from the 17th century. The original structure is believed by architectural historian Dr Alan Gailey to date from between 1660 and 1690, based on its butt purlin roof construction, with the house then remodelled in the second quarter of the 18th century to provide the present formal layout. The 1832-33 Ordnance Survey map shows a matching house on this site, and the 1834 valuation records it as a relatively old thatched building in good condition. The building is rated as quality letter '2B+', measuring 44ft by 21½ft by 11½ft, with various agricultural outbuildings recorded at that date. It remained in the Tuft family from at least the early 19th century, with Edward Tuft acquiring the freehold from the Wallace Estate in 1894; a descendant still occupies the house today.

The external finish is of limestone chips with a recessed base. The thatch covering is contained within tiled parapets, with each gable rising to a corbelled red brick chimney bearing one pot. There are three rows of exposed scallops at the ridge and one at the eaves. The ridge is of the wrap-over variety and the eaves are cut at an angle. All windows in the main house are vertically sliding, plain sashed with bevelled sash stops. The openings are dressed with slightly raised surrounds, lightly moulded at the bottoms on the front elevation, with sills of traditional depths. The main entrance has four facetted panels and bolection mouldings, with a plain fanlight set in a plain surround terminating in door blocks. To the west of the entrance are two windows; to the east are one window and a sheeted door in the position of the original entrance, also in a plain surround but without door blocks. Beyond this is a single storey pitched roof annex lit by a top-hung window, its roof covered with cement fibre slates and finished at the gable with a timber bargeboard; the rainwater goods are of plastic. The rear elevation has four windows, the second from the west raised to accommodate the staircase landing. A pair of similar but reduced-dimension windows appears in either gable.

The thatch has been maintained and repaired in recent decades: applications to replace it with slate were refused in 1982, and re-thatching using wheat straw was carried out by Gerry Agnew in 1983. Minor repairs to roof timbers were undertaken in 1986, with further repairs including patching using rye and flax completed by Brian Rogers in 1992-93. Gerry Agnew undertook additional repairs in 1995 and carried out a complete re-thatch using flax in 1997. No major structural alterations to the house are recorded in post-1864 valuations. Dr Gailey, who studied the construction in 1982-83, considered this house to be among the top thirty-five thatched vernacular buildings in Northern Ireland.