?22a Gracefield Road, Gracefield, Ballymaguigan, Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, BT45 6LD

22a Gracefield Road, Gracefield, Ballymaguigan

This is a small, relatively low one-and-a-half storey vernacular house, probably built before 1832, located on the west side of Gracefield Road within the small hamlet of Gracefield, roughly three miles south-west of Magherafelt. To its south side it is joined to a larger single storey house of probably the same age, though that neighbouring property has been heavily modernised in recent years.

The asymmetric front elevation faces roughly east, directly onto the roadside, and is finished in rough harling (roughcast render) and whitewash. Slightly to the left of centre at ground level is a low doorway fitted with a relatively recent timber sheeted door with a glazed panel. To the left of the doorway is a small window with a dilapidated single-light frame, which may originally have been a sash. To the right of the doorway is a slightly larger window retaining a dilapidated sash with vertical glazing bars in a two-over-two arrangement. Both ground floor windows have relatively recent simple gabled surrounds. Directly above the doorway, approximately 0.3 metres above it, is a small window with a crudely fashioned four-pane frame. A similar window sits to the right of this. The north gable is blank.

The gabled roof is covered with corrugated iron, with cement-rendered parapets to the gables and a small, roughly centrally positioned rendered chimneystack. Metal guttering runs along the front elevation and the north gable.

To the centre of the rear elevation there is a relatively large flat-roofed extension in painted brick, added some time after 1975 and dating probably from the 1970s or 1980s. On the north face of this extension there is a door, and on its west face a relatively large window with a modern frame. To the left of the extension, on the rear elevation of the original house, is a small window that has been boarded up. To the right of the extension is a larger window with a modern frame. At the far left-hand, northernmost edge of the rear elevation there is a large, crudely constructed rubble-built buttress.

Historical context

The house sits within the historically significant Moravian settlement of Gracefield. According to the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of the 1830s, the small village was established in 1749 when local Moravian converts acquired land in Ballymaguigan and built a church, a preacher's house, and other dwellings. However, this account is not fully supported by a key contemporary source — the diary of the Lisnamorrow and Gracefield Moravian Congregation.

This diary, written by successive Moravian ministers and surviving for the years 1759–63, 1770–72, 1776–77, 1793–95, 1799–1800, 1804–12, 1825–27, 1848–52 and intermittently up to 1902, makes clear that although Moravian converts were present in Ballymaguigan and surrounding townlands in the early 1760s, their place of worship at that time was a thatched chapel at Lisnamorrow, some miles to the south-west. John Cennick is said to have preached at the Church of Ireland at Lisnamorrow in 1748 or 1749, suggesting that the date of 1749 referred to in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs relates to the founding of a Moravian congregation in the general area rather than the specific establishment of Gracefield itself.

The townland of Ballymaguigan first appears frequently in the diary in May 1763, when the minister, Reverend John Browne, records viewing the site and considering where best to build a new church. Land was acquired shortly after, and by late July masons were at work in the area, with Browne accompanying Brother Jonathan Simpson to inspect timber for the building and, in October, acquiring fifty-five barrels of lime in preparation for construction the following spring. No diaries survive for the years 1764 to 1769, though the final page of the 1763 diary contains two sketches of roof trusses and a list of accounts, suggesting building had begun or was imminent. By 1770 the chapel was in place along with a congregational house (presumably the preacher's residence), a hall, a farmhouse, and references to various families' houses. Building work was continuing, however, with a congregational meeting of 5 August noting subscriptions for the ceiling of the chapel, new houses under construction in April and June, and a new burial ground laid out to the east of the chapel. The name "Gracefield" does not appear in the diary until July 1776, the settlement previously being referred to simply as "Ballymaguigan."

The absence of regular diary entries after 1777 makes it difficult to trace the village's development through the later 18th and early 19th centuries, but it is clear that Gracefield, like Moravianism in Ireland generally, made little headway after its initial period of growth in the 1760s and 1770s. The Ordnance Survey map and first valuation survey, both of 1832, show the church, preacher's house, and sisters' house on the north side of the present Ballymaguigan Road, with a scattering of houses along that road and the present Gracefield Road to the south, and a spade mill to the north-west. The valuation records nothing but old buildings, with few above rateable value, suggesting most houses were modest single storey structures probably dating from the village's foundation some seventy years earlier. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1836 confirm this picture, describing two small streets — one formed principally by the Moravian church, the clergyman's residence, the sisters' house, and a few other neat and uniform buildings; the other an irregular and straggling row of dirty houses principally occupied by the poorer class of weavers and mechanics. Of the twenty-five houses in the village, nineteen were single storey and the remainder two storeys, and the village was described as neither improving in size, trade, nor appearance.

A new schoolhouse was added to the east side of the church around 1840, but this did not reverse the settlement's decline. The revised Ordnance Survey map of 1856 and second valuation survey of 1857 record a picture remarkably similar to that of 1832, but with fewer inhabitants and, somewhat symbolically, with the spade mill to the north-west recorded as in ruins. In 1937 Moravian worship at Gracefield ended and the chapel was sold to the Church of Ireland. The attached preacher's house was demolished some years later, and the school reverted to use as a Sunday school.

The history of this particular property is difficult to trace precisely, given its small size and the fact that the most detailed maps of Gracefield prior to the 1920s are at the small scale of six inches to one mile. Buildings are shown on this general site on the Ordnance Survey maps of 1832 and 1856, though it is not possible to confirm whether any occupied this exact location. The house appears to be shown on the 1905 edition. Very few houses in the village are recorded in the 1832 valuation, and while all are recorded in the 1857 valuation, no dimensions are given and the accompanying map presents the same problems of scale and interpretation. Given the vernacular character of the building and the evidence that very little new building took place in Gracefield after 1832 at the latest, the house may well date from the early 1800s or earlier. It could plausibly have been one of the houses forming the straggling row described by the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1836, though without more concrete evidence this cannot be stated with certainty.

Primary sources consulted include: PRONI MIC/1F/3/26 (Gracefield title deeds, 1719–1927); PRONI MIC/1F/3/14 (Registers of baptisms, marriages and burials of the Lisnamorrow and Gracefield Moravian Congregation, 1750–1931); PRONI MIC/1F/3/13 (Diaries of the Lisnamorrow and Gracefield Moravian Congregation, 1759–1902); PRONI MIC/1F/3/19 (Gracefield accounts, 1819–29 and 1894–1917); PRONI VAL/1B/523 (First valuation book, Artrea, 1832); PRONI VAL/1A/5/47 (First valuation map, County Londonderry, sheet 47, 1832); the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, County Londonderry volume, edited by Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (Queen's University Belfast, 1993); Notes relating to the Manor of Sal, explanatory of the Terrier of 1845 (London, the Salters' Company, 1846); PRONI VAL/2B/5/26a (Second valuation notebook, Artrea, 1857); PRONI VAL/2A/5/47b (Second valuation map, County Londonderry, sheet 47, Artrea Parish); a drawing of Gracefield Moravian chapel by John England, 1889, bearing the caption "commenced 1767"; and PRONI OS/6/5/47/3 (Ordnance Survey six-inch map, County Londonderry, sheet 47, 1905). Secondary sources consulted include Brother James Mitchell's A History of Gracehill (1943, with additions by Reverend Richard Ingram, 1977); S.G. Hanna's The Origin and Nature of the Gracehill Moravian Settlement (Queen's University Belfast thesis, 1967); and S.J. Connolly (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford University Press, 1998).