168 Low Road, Islandmagee, Larne, Co Antrim, BT40 3RF

This is a two-storey gabled house dating from approximately 1820 to 1839, situated in a rural location within the townland of Ballyharry, Islandmagee, alongside other farm buildings. The main house has had much of its original fabric replaced with unsuitable materials, including an asbestos slate roof, rebuilt red brick chimneys, metal casement windows to the dormers, a later flat-roofed porch with pre-cast concrete base walls, and PVC downpipes. The ground floor front elevation retains its original sash windows. A western wing is constructed of rubble, partly cement rendered, and has a corrugated asbestos roof. An unusual feature of this wing is a re-used historic architectural fragment located at its right-hand end, adjacent to the house’s gable. This fragment consists of a ledged door with a sidelight; below the sidelight’s cill is a cusped sandstone recess with dressed sandstone jambs and cill, showing traces of harling and limewashing both inside the recess and on the sandstone opening. The sandstone appears to be salvaged from the nearby St John’s Church of Ireland, which dates from around 1600. Local tradition suggests that Gilbert Laird, the house’s owner in 1827 when St John’s Church of Ireland was being reduced in size, re-used discarded window tracery fragments. The property stands within the boundary of an ancient graveyard (SMR no. ANT41:17). The house is shown on an Ordnance Survey map of 1832.