1 Church Road, Gracehill, Ballykennedy, Ballymena, Co Antrim

A plain, low, two-storey rendered and gabled house of possible late 18th century construction, located at the north-west end of Church Road in the small village of Gracehill, next to the junction with Galgorm Road. The building sits slightly below road level, with its front façade facing roughly east. It has a small full-height gabled return to the rear and a long attached single-storey outbuilding, also to the rear. The building was substantially altered during the mid-20th century, probably around the 1940s, and as a consequence lost most of its original architectural quality.

The front façade is roughly symmetrical. At ground floor level, a recent panelled timber door sits in the centre, with a plain rectangular fanlight and half-height sidelights. To the far left and far right are plain sash windows. The first floor has three similar but marginally shorter sash windows. On the south gable, there is a small steel-framed window to the left at ground floor level — almost certainly a 1940s insertion — and a plain sash window to the left at first floor level. The north gable is blank.

To the rear, a full-height gabled return projects to the left of centre. On the west face of this return, at ground floor level, there is a timber sheeted door to the right and a squarish steel-framed window, also dating from around the 1940s, to the left. The first floor of the return has two windows of differing sizes, both with steel frames. The north and south faces of the return are blank. To the left of the return on the main building there is a relatively large squarish steel-framed window at ground floor level and another at first floor level. To the right of the return, the long single-storey outbuilding projects outward. In the narrow space between the return and the outbuilding at ground floor level of the main building, there is a very narrow steel-framed window, with a larger steel-framed window directly above it at first floor level.

The entire exterior is finished in roughcast render, with smooth render to the edges of the front façade. The roof has a slight overhang with plain bargeboards, suggesting the roof was replaced during the mid-20th century renovation. The main roof section is slated, while that over the return appears to be covered in asbestos tiles. There are fireclay ridge tiles and three rendered chimneystacks unevenly spaced along the main ridge — an arrangement that probably reflects the building having originally been partly single storey. Rainwater goods are in cast iron.

The long single-storey outbuilding to the rear is also finished in roughcast render. Its roof is largely slated but covered in corrugated iron at the west end, which has also been slightly extended in timber. The roof level lowers slightly towards the east end. The north façade has two timber sheeted pedestrian doors, a large flat-arched vehicle door and three windows, one of which is boarded up and another obscured by vegetation. The south façade has at least two further windows, though this side was largely obscured by a close boundary hedge. At the west end of the outbuilding row there is a corrugated iron Nissen structure.

To the front of the house on the Church Road side, a very low wall with simple mid-20th century railings encloses a small forecourt paved with relatively recent small square sets.

The village of Gracehill was founded in the later 1750s by followers of the Moravian evangelist John Cennick. The land was leased from Lord O'Neill and settled by the Moravian congregation from nearby Gloonan, one of a number of groups established by Cennick himself between his arrival in Ulster in around 1746 and his death in 1755. Much of the village as it appears today was built between approximately 1765 and the 1790s, with buildings arranged along the grid pattern of Church Road, Low Road (now Cennick Road), and what are now Montgomery Street and Academy Street. A building is shown on the site of the present property on a village plan dating from approximately 1805 to 1819. In the valuation of 1833 to 1834, a relatively old house graded 'B' and matching the dimensions of the present building is recorded, and the same dwelling — now with the long outbuilding — reappears in the valuation of 1859 to 1861. It is therefore highly likely that the house standing today is the one recorded in 1833, which the valuers considered to have been built some decades earlier, possibly in the late 18th century. In 1833 the occupant is listed as an Enoch Craig, with a Miss Lennox recorded as resident in 1859 to 1861.

The house appears to have undergone major renovation in the mid-20th century, perhaps around 1940. At this point the present return is thought to have been added, the interior layout remodelled, and the roof replaced — as the characteristic overhang suggests.

The Moravian Church originated as a sect in Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic) in the mid-15th century. Originally known as the Unitas Fratrum, or Unity of the Brethren, the movement faced persecution during the Counter-Reformation and survived as an underground movement for much of the later 16th and 17th centuries. The present 'Renewed Church' dates from 1727, when refugees mainly from Moravia, who had been granted permission to settle on land belonging to Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf on the Saxon-Polish border, began spreading their message to other European states and beyond. Zinzendorf had initially envisaged the Moravians forming societies within established churches, but a separate church was ultimately formed instead.

John Cennick — possibly pronounced 'Sennitch' or 'Kennitch' — was the grandson of a Moravian who had fled to England from Bohemia in the early 17th century. Born in Reading in 1718, he became a close associate of John Wesley in the late 1730s and a preacher of some note. After disagreements with Wesley — Cennick being Calvinist, Wesley being not — he was dismissed from Wesley's service in 1739 and later came into contact with Moravian preachers in London. Having been received as a member of the Brethren in 1746, he embarked on an evangelising mission in Ireland, concentrating first in Dublin and then, between approximately 1748 and 1755, in Ulster. Much of his work was centred on the area immediately to the north-east of Lough Neagh, drawing converts from both Roman Catholic and Presbyterian backgrounds. He established over 200 congregations, mainly in County Antrim. Cennick's early death in 1755 stifled the momentum of the church in Ireland and, despite the establishment of a Moravian model village at Gracehill in the years following 1755, the church rapidly declined in importance across the country. As the historian David Hempton has observed, its members were 'never able to fulfil the evangelistic promise of their first decade in Ireland'.