Former Common Barn, 3 Springhill Road, Moneymore, Magherafelt, Co Londonderry, BT45 7NG

Former Common Barn, Moneymore

An ambitious stone-built barn erected between 1840 and 1843 by the Drapers' Company and designed by William John Booth. This is a severe example of early Victorian architecture, now significantly overgrown to the rear and compromised by haphazard additions.

The building is a five-bay, two-storey structure with coursed whitestone walls, sandstone quoins, and sandstone trim to windows and doors. It is roofed with natural slate in a pitched gabled form with half-round metal guttering. The north elevation, which fronts onto Springhill Road, displays five bays of segmented-headed, shallow recessed windows divided by broad piers. Each recess contains a two-light segmented-headed window at ground and first floor levels, though some are now boarded up. The central bay features a large door opening with a sliding wood door.

The west gable contains a Perron-type external stairway with flights ascending to a first-floor landing. Above the landing sits a flat-roofed canopy supported on a pair of sandstone ashlar piers rising from ground level. The stair flights have solid balustrades with a round stone handrail and vertically tooled infill panels; the balustrade returns outwards at the bottom, and the space beneath the flights is infilled with ashlar sandstone. Above the canopy is a round-headed opening with a plain band. The gable wall is built of coursed white limestone with sandstone quoins and timber barge boards with generous overhang. The space under the landing has been boarded up. Steps are in sandstone, and a single-panel door provides access to the first floor. A bellcote may originally have surmounted the west gable. The east side is heavily overgrown with ivy and is assumed to mirror the west side, except that the central bay has a two-storey concrete-block toilet addition. The south gable, built of coursed white limestone, has a single-storey flat-roofed concrete-block shed added in line.

The building occupies a generous, unkempt site on Springhill Road just within the Moneymore Conservation Area boundary. In the northeast corner of the site stands a derelict cottage, four bays long and contemporary with the barn, originally built for a storekeeper. It features a sheeted timber door in the second bay and three boarded-up segmented-headed windows. The cottage walls are built of coursed white limestone with red brick trim to windows and painted stone. The roof is natural slate with two asymmetrically placed chimney stacks not sited on the gables; the gables are stone-faced and windowless. To the rear is a narrow enclosed yard with ruinous stores opposite the cottage. The building yard is heavily overgrown with vegetation.

The Drapers' Company commissioned this building to provide a common barn for Moneymore where grain could be threshed. Booth prepared drawings in 1840, and the building was completed in 1843 by builder D. Magee. There is little recorded evidence of how the building was historically used. Currently, the ground floor operates as a repair garage, though not consistently open, while the upper floor is used as an indoor bowling alley. The minimal outward signs of activity suggest current site usage is minimal.

The building is of industrial archaeological interest and represents a rare survival of a purpose-built grain barn from this period in the region.