71 Nursery Road Gracehill Tullygowan Ballymena Co. Antrim BT42 2QA

71 Nursery Road, Gracehill, Tullygowan, Ballymena — Farmhouse, circa 1840

This is a detached four-bay two-storey farmhouse, built around 1840, prominently positioned on the corner where Nursery Road meets Ballykennedy Road at Gracehill. Its corner site gives it considerable presence in the surrounding countryside. The house has an elongated rectangular plan and presents a formal face to the road whilst retaining a more utilitarian character to the rear.

ARCHITECTURE AND MATERIALS

The roof is a gabled pitch covered in Welsh slate, with painted timber verge boards, flush eaves, and original cast-iron rainwater goods. There are rendered chimneystacks at either gable and one positioned mid-ridge. Three of the four elevations are finished in pebble dash render, with smooth render used for the corner quoins and for horizontal band courses running at mid-ground-floor height, first-floor cill level, and eaves level. A deep base plinth runs along the base of the walls. The rear (east) elevation is left as exposed random rubble stone throughout, giving it an informal and distinctly vernacular character in contrast to the treated front.

ELEVATIONS

The front elevation (facing east onto Nursery Road) is four bays wide, formally arranged, with square-headed openings set within smooth plaster surrounds. The doorway is unadorned and positioned slightly off-centre. First-floor windows are four-over-eight multi-pane timber sliding sash with externally visible box sashes. The ground-floor door and window openings are currently boarded and their condition cannot be confirmed.

The south gable elevation faces onto Ballykennedy Road. It is dashed with three smooth render bands and contains a single ground-floor window, which is also boarded. A single-storey outbuilding abuts the south-west corner; its rear wall continues along the roadside as a rubblestone and part-rendered boundary wall, enclosing the rear farmyard.

The rear elevation (west) is rubblestone, informally arranged, with some partial render and brick infill around the square-headed openings. At ground floor there is a single door with a vertical sheet timber door, one eight-over-eight multi-pane timber sliding sash window, and two six-over-six multi-pane timber sliding sash windows. At first floor there are three-over-six multi-pane timber sliding sash windows, with one six-over-six multi-pane timber sliding sash window set noticeably lower than the others. The box sashes on the rear elevation are mounted flush with the exterior wall surface. A single-storey outbuilding with a mono-pitch roof abuts the south-west corner.

The north gable elevation has no openings. Its pebble dash finish is divided visually into four panels by the smooth render corners, the horizontal band courses at mid-ground-floor, first-floor cill and eaves levels, and the base plinth.

OUTBUILDINGS AND SETTING

Four outbuildings are associated with the property. Outbuilding 1 is single storey with a mono-pitch roof, attached to the south-west corner of the farmhouse; its rear wall forms part of the south-west rubblestone boundary wall enclosing the main farmyard. Outbuilding 2 is a concrete block and rendered barn with a dual-pitched slate roof and a mono-pitch slate-roofed return attached to its south gable. Outbuilding 3 is a corrugated metal-clad barn with a barrel-vault roof that encloses the main farmyard on its north side whilst also addressing a second farmyard to the north. Outbuilding 4 is a corrugated metal-clad barn with a dual-pitch roof, sited to the east of the second farmyard. Outbuildings 2, 3 and 4 are modern farm buildings. Together, the farmhouse, its attached outbuilding, and the rubblestone courtyard wall along Ballykennedy Road create a coherent and characterful farmstead group.

HISTORY

A building of similar plan and position — though without any outbuildings — is visible on the Ordnance Survey map of 1833. It does not appear in the near-contemporary valuation records, which suggests it was at that time a relatively modest structure, most likely single-storey and probably thatched. By the time of the revised Ordnance Survey map of 1857, an arrangement much closer to the present house and its attached outbuilding is shown, though at that date the outbuilding appears to have been larger and L-shaped.

In the second valuation of around 1859, the property is recorded as a house, offices (meaning outbuildings), and land, leased by William McCann from Reverend Robert Wilson Rowan of Mount Davys, Cardonaghy townland, Galgorm. The buildings were valued at £9. No dimensions were provided by the valuers, so it cannot be stated with certainty that the house standing then was identical to the present building. However, as there is no record of any major subsequent alteration, it is assumed that the present structure was standing by that point. The house was therefore most likely constructed sometime between the mid-1830s and the mid-to-later 1850s. It is possible that the building resulted from the heightening of the pre-1833 structure, though visual inspection of the rubble construction of the rear wall shows no obvious evidence of this.

William McCann was succeeded as tenant shortly before 1872 by David Clarke. In the same year the rateable value of the buildings was reduced to £8, possibly indicating a state of disrepair. A letting advertisement placed by a David Clarke of Gloonan in the Ballymena Observer of 30 March 1878 describes "that house in Tullygowan on the leading road from Gracehill to Randalstown… well adapted to the carrying on the grocery or manufacturing business," which appears to refer to this property and suggests that Clarke, though holding the lease, was not at that point living there.

Henry James Clarke is recorded as leaseholder in 1890. By 1893 the rateable value had been reduced again, to £5-10-0, with the valuers noting the house — which they recorded as measuring 16 yards by 7 yards by 2 storeys — as "old" and the "offices down." This suggests the building may not have been in regular occupation since around 1878, a conclusion supported by the house's apparent absence from both the 1901 and 1911 census records. From 1893 onwards the valuers refer to it as a "caretaker's house," though the precise meaning of this designation is unclear.

Henry James Clarke acquired the freehold of the property from the Rowan estate in 1922 and remained the recorded leaseholder until at least 1929, apparently dying in that year or early 1930. The current appearance of the building — in particular the render to the front and gable elevations and the overhanging roof — suggests that a refurbishment took place at some point during the years after 1922. The modern outbuildings to the north of the house may also have been added around this time; they are not shown on maps predating 1921. The house was subsequently acquired by a family called Hilton sometime in the 1930s and was last occupied in around the 1990s.

The current owner states that the building, or possibly its predecessor, has a connection to events during the 1798 Rebellion. He also believes that at some point — possibly in the 19th century — the south room functioned informally as a drinking establishment, serving those wishing to consume alcohol beyond the temperance confines of the nearby Moravian village of Gracehill, and that what is now the window in the south gable was originally the entrance to this establishment.