142 Moy Road, Culceeran, Dungannon, Co Tyrone, BT71 7DX

142 Moy Road, Culceeran, Dungannon, County Tyrone

This is a well-preserved, large, two-storey, four structural bay, thatched vernacular farmhouse, most likely dating from around 1741 — though physical evidence in the roof structure suggests it may be somewhat earlier. It is a lobby entry type, though the original jamb wall has been removed. The building is of considerable rarity and importance as a surviving example of a now uncommon vernacular type, and the listing extends to the house, barn, gates, piers and surrounding walling.

Exterior

The house faces east, overlooking the route of a former road. It is wet dash rendered with smooth plaster detail at the windows, base and corners. Four large corner stones in limestone project from the general line of the walls at the base of the building. Three chimneys sit on the ridge: one on the southern gable (unpainted), one aligning with the entrance door, and one on the inner wall of the last bay from the north. All three are painted and parged over the thatch.

The thatch is scallop-fixed, currently secured by an 'X' pattern of hazel liggers. It sits approximately 100mm above the gables and is parged along the edge, and cut back parallel with the roof along the eaves.

The front east elevation has four-pane sash windows with horns at ground floor level. The porch, added in the 1920s and replaced in 1996, is located in the second bay from the south. It has a flat roof with parapet and recessed glazing along its full length. The southernmost bay has three windows; the second bay to the north of the porch has a small window; the remaining bays have two windows each. At first floor, timber casement windows align with the sashes below — these replaced metal casements that were in place at the time of listing in 1991. An additional window was inserted into the northern bay as part of the 1996 renovation. Both gables are blank. The northern gable formerly had a lean-to barn. The southern gable is connected at its south-west corner to an adjacent barn via a wall approximately 2,300mm high containing a door opening.

The rear west elevation is dominated by a rear return positioned between the second and third structural bays from the south. On the southern side of the return, a small glazed lobby has been added since listing, with the roof extended over it. The return itself has four-pane sash windows at both ground and first floor, and a fascia on its gable. On the main house to the south of the return, there is a single sash at ground floor near the corner. At first floor, more centrally positioned, an eyebrow window sits up from the thatch, also with a fascia. This is a six-over-six pane sash window with a curved head and a steeply pitched thatched roof above it. Although the window is historic, it was not thatched at the time of listing. A similar eyebrow window is located to the northern side of the return. At ground level on the northern side there are two doors and two sash windows, one of which is a double sash. A slated rain hood has been added over the door to this northern bay since listing.

The stone barns to the rear form a rectangular courtyard. They have been recently renovated and their render has been removed to expose the rubble sandstone behind. A new wing built to match the existing barns has been added along the roadside to give greater enclosure to the courtyard. The barns are slated and fitted with cast iron rainwater goods on projecting bricks. To the south of the house, with its gable parallel to the courtyard, is a small barn currently in poor condition. It has a corrugated metal roof and large cracks in its walls. Each gable of this barn has a circular opening, and the remaining openings — a door and a window — face west towards the rest of the farm buildings.

The gates are cast metal with finials and slim bars, simple and elegant in character. They are complemented by simple square-section tooled sandstone gateposts topped with pyramid copings, flanked by curved walls retaining their original wet dash lime render. An Ordnance Survey benchmark is cut into one of the gateposts. A gravelled access road sweeps from the gate to the south of the building around to the front of the house.

Interior and Roof Structure

The historic roof structure remains largely intact and is of considerable interest. A description from 1891 records that the principal room was to the left on entering, and had an oak ceiling with a distinctive oak beam running from wall to wall. This ceiling has since been removed, though the present owner has installed a new oak beam. The original lobby entry arrangement has been altered by the removal of the jamb wall.

History and Ownership

The house appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1832 as part of a substantial collection of farm buildings. At that date, the road to Dungannon ran to the east of the property, and a narrower structure abutted the north end of the house, projecting approximately two structural bays to the north-east to meet the edge of the road. A small return was shown to the centre of the rear, and the eastern section of the present freestanding barn was already indicated. A branch road passed the north-west gable before turning 45 degrees to the south-west past a large T-shaped building.

The valuation of 1835 records two separate properties on this small site. The first, rated at £4 7s 0d, belonged to John Pillar and comprised an old thatched house in good condition measuring 41½ × 21 × 12 feet, with equally old thatched outbuildings of 24½ × 17 × 7, 51 × 16 × 6, and 72½ × 20 × 6 feet. The second, rated at £4 9s 0d and in the hands of James Pillar, contained an old two-storey thatched house of 33½ × 21 × 12 feet, a slated outbuilding of 33 × 14½ × 13 feet, three thatched outbuildings and walls of 49½ × 20 × 6, 32 × 16 × 5½, and 45 × 16 × 5½ feet, and a further thatched outbuilding of 37 × 17½ × 6½ feet. The map evidence suggests the north-western portion of the T-shaped building to the west was likely the second house.

By the revised Ordnance Survey map of 1858, the structure abutting the north end of the main house had been demolished and the road had been redirected to its current position to the west of the property. The original road was still shown, but truncated to the south-east by a field boundary. The freestanding barn to the south-west had been extended westward by four bays to meet the new road, and the larger north-west portion of the T-shaped outbuilding had disappeared. The second valuation of 1859 mentions no second house, supporting the inference that the demolished section of the T-shaped structure was the other dwelling recorded in 1835.

The doorway originally had a large rectangular stone lintel supported on stone jambs, reportedly inscribed with the date 1741 and the initials of James and Mary Pillar, the supposed original residents. According to notes compiled in 1891 — copies of which are available at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland — the Pillars were a Huguenot family who had come to Ulster via Scotland. Mary (possibly née Greer) was a member of the Quaker congregation at Grange near Moy, and James married her in 1726. A date of 1741 is consistent with a naïve drawing of a substantial house depicted on this site on a map of Culkeeran townland drawn in 1742, though the physical evidence of the roof trusses suggests the building may be somewhat earlier. The valuers who first surveyed it in the 1830s described it as simply 'old'.

The Pillar family remained in possession until sometime between 1835 and 1859 — the 1891 notes say 1850 — when the property passed to the Kidd family. Thomas Kidd is recorded as resident in the 1859 valuation. The Rea family succeeded the Kidds from 1871, acquiring the freehold in 1915 and remaining until 1920. The Williamson family then acquired the house, and it has remained with their descendants.

A photograph taken in the late 19th century shows the building without a porch, with six-over-six Georgian-paned sash windows to the ground floor and one-over-one sashes to the first floor. A small sash window lit the attic on the southern gable, two windows at first floor were absent from the northern end, and the inscribed stone lintel and its attendant jambs were still in place over the doorway. No decoration is visible on the lintel in the photograph.

According to the present owner, the northern structural bay was damaged by fire in the early 1900s and that portion of the roof was subsequently slated. In the 1920s the house underwent an extensive renovation, which appears to have involved inserting metal window frames to the first floor and constructing the then-porch. The addition of the porch destroyed the inscribed lintel, though remnants of it remain in place. The building was listed in 1991 and re-thatched with combed wheat straw the following year. The most recent major renovation took place in 1996, when an additional window was inserted into the north bay, a new porch was built, the rear return was altered, the thatch was extended over the previously slated northern section of the roof, a lean-to at the north end was removed, exterior doors were replaced, and a roof was added over the door to the north bay. Three-quarters of the sash windows were repaired rather than replaced at this stage, the render to the sides and rear was renewed, and some internal reorganisation was carried out.

It has been suggested that the building once served as an inn, and that the unusual first floor eyebrow window was associated with a bar in one of the ground floor rooms. No firm evidence has been produced to substantiate this, though the location at the junction of two roads as shown on the 1832 map, and the presence at that date of a substantial projection to the front of the building, are arguably suggestive of an inn use. The farm attached to the house covers only approximately fifty acres, which is quite small for a dwelling of this size and quality, raising the possibility that the original construction funds came from another source. However, the building stands only roughly a mile from the town of Moy, which might argue against its having served as a coaching inn, which would more typically be found either in the town itself or much further along the road.