Craigs House, 1 DEERPARK ROAD, BELLAGHY, Magherafelt, CO.LONDONDERRY

Craigs House is a detached, three-bay, three-storey dwelling with a single-storey gable porch to its east side, constructed in the second half of the 17th century as a constabulary barracks within the fortified enclosure of Bellaghy Bawn. It sits on a sloped corner lawn at the north-east of the Bawn site, immediately to the left of the main entrance gates, with a dual frontage facing east to Deerpark Road and west to the Bawn courtyard. The building is also a scheduled monument.

The principal, symmetrical elevation faces east. The roof is pitched and covered in natural Welsh slate laid in diminishing courses with black clay ridge tiles. Two cement-rendered chimneys with stone capping and lead flashing rise from opposing gable ends. Half-round cast-iron gutters are supported on cast-iron brackets. The gable-fronted entrance porch has exposed rafters, a painted timber bargeboard, a roll-top red clay ridge, ogee-moulded gutters and a circular downpipe. Walls are white-painted harled and roughcast render with a raised eaves course. Cross pattress wall ties are present at second-floor level.

Window openings at second-floor level are segment-headed with painted stone sills and six-paned single-glazed timber casement windows. The first floor has six-over-six single-glazed timber sliding sash windows within segment-headed openings. Ground-floor openings are square-headed and also contain six-over-six single-glazed timber sliding sash windows. The entrance door is of Edwardian style, single-glazed with coloured panes, flanked by fixed sidelights within the porch. It is approached by six concrete steps leading from a front garden path to the east, which connects to a cast-iron gate set between rubble stone walls at street level. The north and south elevations of the porch each have a square-headed opening containing six-over-six single-glazed timber sliding sash windows.

The rear elevation to the west is asymmetrical with three bays, containing two timber single-glazed sliding sash windows (each with six-over-six panes), two timber casement windows, and an original timber-boarded door with fanlight. There are no openings at second-floor level on this elevation. The door is reached via stone steps descending from the upper ground level of the courtyard behind the house. Cross pattress wall ties appear again at second-floor level here. The south side elevation is blank, abutted by a single-storey rendered wall with a blanked-off door opening, and has a single cast-iron downpipe. The north side elevation has two irregularly sized windows, both timber, single-glazed, and sliding sash, along with an original single-glazed and panelled door at ground level.

Materials throughout are consistent: the roof is natural Welsh slate with black clay ridge tiles and cement-rendered chimneys with stone capping; windows are a variety of original and later timber sliding sash and casement types, single-glazed and putty-fronted, with black-painted stone sills and black-painted window surrounds; walls are painted roughcast render; all rainwater goods are cast iron including all bracketry. The boundary walls to the eastern side are rubblestone with cement caps, while the western elevation has original cast-iron railings on a cement base. The original wrought-iron pedestrian gate survives on the eastern side, and original wrought-iron gates to the gate screen remain on the south side.

The house retains much of its historic character and original fabric. Window and door openings are unaltered, and the proximity of the building to the Bawn's boundary wall creates an attractive garden setting within what is otherwise a defensive arrangement. Some alterations have been made to the interior at ground-floor level, but the symmetrical plan and front elevation remain largely intact. Craigs House is one of the primary buildings visible from the road when approaching the Bawn from Castle Street, and its front elevation is integral to the presentation of the wider site.

The history of Bellaghy Bawn begins around 1614, when the Vintners' Company commenced construction of a fortified bawn on the 32,000-acre landholding it had been granted as one of the London Companies participating in the Plantation of Londonderry. The intention was that the bawn would serve as the administrative and defensible core of a new settlement, to be called Vintnerstown, at Bellaghy — though the site was located, possibly unknowingly, on an Early Christian ringfort. Initial construction was carried out by the Vintners' agent, Henry Jackson, but progress was slow and in 1616 the Company leased the Bellaghy holding to John Rowley, a former Lord Mayor of Derry, who took on responsibility for completing the building work. Rowley died the following year, and the estate passed to his business partner, Baptist Jones, who was also the Salters' Company agent. Jones made sufficient progress that in 1618–19 Nicholas Pynnar was able to report a bawn of brick and lime, 100 feet square, with two round flankers and a good rampart, along with two substantial houses within the enclosure. By 1622 Thomas Phillips described the complex in more detail, including a manor house of lime and brick, 60 feet long and 27 feet broad and two storeys high, tiled, with a round flanker, and an opposing house of brick, 54 feet long and 26 feet broad and one storey high with a similar flanker, all enclosed within a brick wall 14 feet high forming a courtyard 100 feet square. Thomas Raven's pictorial map accompanying Phillips' survey, captioned "The Vintners buildings at Belleaghe", provides the earliest visual record of the site, showing a square brick enclosure with ogee-domed flankers to the north-west and south-east, a house to the south and another to the west, a small angled square tower to the south-west corner, a centrally located gateway in the north wall, and the settlement of Bellaghy — including a newly built church, a mill, fifteen cage-work houses, four small thatched houses, ten cabins, and a market cross with stocks — to the north.

The newly knighted Sir Baptist Jones died around 1623–24, owing over £300 to the Company, and the lease along with his debts passed to Henry Conway, who also married Jones's widow. Conway's position was consolidated in the 1630s when the London Companies' Ulster estates were forfeited to the Crown and he obtained a new grant including the bawn. During the 1641 Rising, Sir Phelim O'Neill's forces attacked the settlement and the townspeople took refuge within the bawn. Conway reportedly attempted to negotiate a surrender of the bawn to the insurgents in exchange for being allowed to remove certain valuables, but the town and castle were ultimately burned and the inhabitants forced to fend for themselves.

The history of the site in the two decades following the 1640s disturbances is uncertain. Several secondary sources suggest the bawn was renewed or rebuilt around 1643–45, but the site appears not to be mentioned in the 1654–56 Civil Survey, the 1659 Census, or the 1660s hearth money returns, which may indicate it remained abandoned for a period. Any reconstruction during this time was likely carried out by Sir John Clothworthy (died 1665), who became Viscount Massereene in 1660 and had assumed Conway's interests in the area. His son-in-law, John Skeffington (died 1695), the 2nd Viscount, eventually secured a lease from the Vintners in the 1670s. Archaeological evidence indicates that the smaller house on the western side of the complex was not rebuilt after the 1640s and that its site was levelled. The larger dwelling to the south was probably renewed in the mid to late 17th century, though subsequent late Georgian alterations have left little discernible trace of this. The north-western round flanker shown on Raven's map was not reconstructed — its remains appear to have been used as a rubbish dump in the early 1700s — while the angled square tower to the south-west, which may originally have been of timber construction, was replaced with the current corner structure at some point before around 1770.

In 1714 William Conolly MP (1662–1729), later Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, became chief tenant, having previously acted as the Vintners' agent and taken possession of the estate following the 3rd Viscount Massereene (died 1714) falling into debt. By 1737 Conolly's nephew and heir, William James Conolly (died 1754), had secured a lease in perpetuity of the Company's entire Irish holding, and his descendants maintained ownership of much of this into the early 20th century. For much of the remainder of the 18th century, Bellaghy saw what one historian has described as continuous but unspectacular growth. Documentation concerning the bawn during this period is relatively scarce, but it is likely that it remained for a time the residence of the Vintners' agent, a position held by Abraham Hamilton from at least 1736 to around 1769. Around the latter year a new agent's residence — described as a good two-storey brick house and later known as the Manor House — was constructed some distance to the north-west, off Main Street on the site where the Seamus Heaney Homeplace now stands, and the bawn subsequently appears to have been sold off as a private dwelling. In 1772 Thomas Connolly granted Richardson Williams, a Dublin attorney, a lease for lives renewable for ever of the bawn along with just over 103 acres of land at a rent of £63 per annum. An undated map of the town tenements and fields of Bellaghy, thought to date from around this time, shows the site with three round flankers but with no other structures delineated. Williams used the property as an occasional or summer residence and retained it until the spring of 1791, when he sold the entire holding — described as including houses, a garden, orchard, demesne and woods — for £3,634 7s 8d to Bishop Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol, who was at that point in the course of constructing his magnificent new palace at Ballyscullion, just east of Bellaghy. A report in the Belfast News-Letter of December 1790 mentions the Bishop returning to the castle of Bellaghy, suggesting he may already have been renting the bawn as a temporary home while the mansion was being built.

Hervey invested significantly in alterations to the site, as evidenced by bills from Dublin architect Francis Sandys during 1791 headed "Bellaghy Castle". A newspaper sale and lease advertisement of August 1791 refers to "the large sums expending on the house". Given its appearance, it seems likely that much of this expenditure went on constructing the present main house (known as the Big House) to the southern side, renovating the adjacent south-western circular flanker, clearing away the remains of the north-western flanker and north wall, and landscaping the area. This work also involved creating a new gateway closer to the bend in the road to the north and constructing a gate lodge beside it. Two structures on the eastern side of the site, on lower ground outside the bawn proper but backing onto its wall, also appear to have been built around this time, though the southern of these — now known as the Wee House, with its lowest level referred to as Robinson's House — is awkwardly proportioned, has an oddly self-contained ground-level section with thick walls and a vaulted ceiling, and may represent an adaptation of an older structure. To the south, beyond the original enclosure and directly south of the flanker, two lower sections of the present range of outbuildings may also date from the 1790s, though maps suggest the northernmost section is later, dating from around the 1830s to 1840s.

By at least 1831 the Big House, Wee House and the southern outbuildings had passed to Charles Hill's grandson, John Hill, while the larger of the buildings outside the walls had become the local police — that is, the Irish Constabulary — barracks. The 1831 valuation records the Big House as measuring 76 feet by 22 feet by 20 feet, the attached flanker tower as 26 feet in diameter by 25 feet high, a linking section at 15 feet by 10 feet by 18 feet, and the Wee House and Robinson's House at 24½ feet by 21 feet by 25 feet. The outbuildings are recorded as comprising sections of 33 feet by 21½ feet by 12 feet, 44 feet by 21½ feet (both with shingled roofs), 10 feet by 9 feet by 16 feet, and a gatehouse of 19 feet by 13 feet by 7 feet. The police barracks is recorded as 26 feet by 49 feet by 23½ feet, with a thatched outbuilding of 32 feet by 21 feet by 10 feet. The first edition Ordnance Survey map shows an arrangement broadly similar to the present, though the flanker is oddly omitted and the outbuildings are shown shorter than the current range. The garden and orchard are shown to the west and south, with what appears to be another orchard to the north-west close to the churchyard. The 1836 Ordnance Survey Memoirs describe the entire "Castle" as perfectly plain in every respect, the dwelling house by no means spacious, with its only architectural pretension being a circular tower of brick at one extremity. The revised Ordnance Survey map of 1850–54 shows the outbuilding range as it stands today, with the barracks specifically captioned as "Constabulary Bk." The 1856 valuation records dimensions broadly similar to those of 1831, but with the linking section (here described as the side wing) now 22 feet in breadth, and the outbuildings identified as stables (45 feet by 22 feet by 12 feet), a byre (33 feet by 22 feet by 12 feet), a coach house (44 feet by 22 feet by 10 feet), and a harness house (17 feet by 18½ feet by 6½ feet), along with a garden house of 16 feet by 16 feet by 18 feet — likely the small structure marked on the boundary of the southern yard and garden on both the 1830 and revised maps. The Wee House is noted as vacant at this time. The barracks is noted as having a privy of 6 feet by 6 feet by 5½ feet.

The Constabulary vacated the barracks in or just before 1874. The building remained unused until 1889, when — following the death of John Hill the previous year — the entire castle site was sold to Dr George Matthew Thompson. He converted the former barracks to a dispensary and may also have made alterations to the Big House around the same time, possibly replacing the roof, whose overhang has a late Victorian appearance. Additional outbuildings may have been added to the south and west of the original range at this time, as shown on the second edition Ordnance Survey map of 1906. In the 1901 Census, Dr Thompson, then 41 years old and a native of Coagh, County Tyrone, is recorded as living at the property with his County Wicklow-born wife Edith, their four young children, and two domestic servants, one of whom, Isabella Dawson, was only 11 years old. The house is noted as a first-class dwelling with 22 rooms in use by the family. By 1911 five of the Thompsons' by then nine children were living at the house with their parents, along with a medical assistant, Dr Robert J. Spence, and two domestic servants. In late 1944, a few months after Dr Thompson's death, the Castle — comprising the main residence, its gate lodge, two other dwelling houses, and 23 acres of land — was sold for £2,000 to Dr Thompson's daughter, Dr Frances Thomas, and her husband Dr Edward Thomas, who had also taken over the practice. The Thomases retained the property until around 1976, when it was acquired by Dr Thomas's partner, Dr Charles Gibson Lowry, who lived in a house of around 1960s construction built just south-west of the rear yard. The old property was subsequently let to tenants until vacated in 1984. The property had already been listed in April 1976, and was acquired by the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland from the Lowry family in 1988, becoming a State Care Monument. A comprehensive conservation project, along with several archaeological excavations, was carried out from the late 1980s onwards, and the site was opened to the public in 1996.

A sequence of archaeological excavations has taken place at Bellaghy Bawn. In 1989 Nick Brannon undertook an excavation to locate the lesser of the two houses within the bawn courtyard, the remains of the 17th-century round flanker tower, and the rampart and gun platform along the west side. In 1990 Brannon completed this project, further examining the south-west corner of the early 17th-century bawn. In 1995 Declan Hurl investigated two rooms of the main house, identifying two phases of activity: the more recent dating from the 18th century, and below this a phase of Early Christian activity associated with the rath. In 2009 Brian Sloan directed an excavation designed as a public outreach exercise, following a geophysical survey of the fields to the west of the bawn. Two trenches were opened: the first revealed the remains of a garden pathway with sherds of 19th- and 20th-century ceramics, glass, brick, flint flakes, and corroded iron objects; the second produced no archaeological significance, with similar finds. The excavation overall revealed very limited archaeological significance. In 2012 Brian Sloan undertook a monitoring excavation of two trenches for the installation of drainage pipes. The first trench, adjacent to the exterior of the eastern bawn wall, showed no archaeological significance. The second ran north–south to the remains of the western wall, in the area of the 1989 excavation, producing small fragments of animal bone, shell, and plastic; however, an east–west return of the service trench at the northern end revealed a brick-and-mortar wall following the line of the upstanding remains of the bawn wall, appearing to bond into another brick wall. This appears to represent the remains of the circular turret depicted on Raven's map of 1622. The walls were considered to be of archaeological significance as construction elements of the bawn and were left in situ. No finds were recovered from this feature.