Drum Manor (remains), Drum Manor Forest Park, Drum Road, Cookstown, Co Tyrone

Drum Manor is the maintained ruin of a 19th century country house in Cookstown, County Tyrone, now set within a Forest Park estate in a rural area. The house was built originally in a Tudor Revival style and subsequently remodelled and extended in a Gothic Revival style. Of the completed building only the ground floor and a small portion of the first floor perimeter walls survive, together with an intact four-storey tower. These elements together form the four sides of an open garden court.

The house was built in 1829 for Major Richardson Brady under the name Oaklands and was then remodelled and extended in 1869 to the designs of William Hastings, architect of Belfast, one of the leading architects of his time in Northern Ireland, at which point it was renamed Drum Manor. The 1869 extensions were carried out for Viscount Stuart and were described at the time as the "tower and main building." Of Hastings' original main building, the surviving north front including the main entrance porch, the south front, and probably also the porch on the east side may all be attributed to him, as can the south terrace balustrading and steps and the screen wall and gateway of 1876. The two gate lodges, also of the 1870s, are likewise his work. The earlier house of 1829 is represented at ground floor level by the blind walling, rectangular bay windows, and polygonal south-east bay of the original triple-gabled east front. An inscribed plaque on the inside of the west wall records the two main building phases of 1829 and 1869. The house was semi-derelict by 1970, still retaining its slated roofs, but the roofs were subsequently removed, the gables taken down, and the entire interior space — apart from the tower — cleared away to form an open garden within the mainly ground floor perimeter walls.

The walls throughout are constructed of regular coursed sandstone ashlar on the outer faces, with projecting string courses and weatherings. On the inner faces the walls are now exposed rubble stonework, where originally they would have been lined with interior finishes. Some newly created buttresses have been added in places to support the north and south walls. The area inside the walls is laid out as a garden, with flower beds, paths, and crazy-paved and cobbled areas, and architectural fragments placed at random.

THE TOWER

The tower is of square plan, rising to four storeys, with an octagonal stair turret at the south-east corner rising to a fifth storey. A projecting weathered plinth and two projecting string courses run through both the main tower and the turret, as well as a deep frieze of cusped panelling. Both the main tower and the turret are crowned by oversailing crenellated parapets supported on machicolations — of massive size on the main tower and smaller on the turret. The turret contains narrow chamfered slit openings stepping up its various faces, with a blind arrow-loop of cruciform shape in each of the north, south, east, and west faces. Windows in the main tower are timber sliding sashes, one over one, with horns, square-headed to the first three storeys and segmental-headed to the top storey. Those in the first two storeys are single lights surmounted by rectangular drip mouldings; those in the top two storeys are grouped in twos or threes, without drip mouldings. The only glazed windows in the entire structure are those in the tower; all other window openings are either open or blocked up.

Access to the tower is through a rectangular doorway at first floor level on the south face, reached by a new flight of exterior steps paved in concrete flags in the north-west corner of the courtyard.

THE NORTH FRONT

The tower is linked to the main north wall by a flying archway of flattened Gothic, or Tudor form, carried on shaped corbels, with quatrefoil sinkings in the spandrels and a Gothic panelled parapet, which together form an entrance to the courtyard. Recessed behind it is a Tudor-arched open doorway approached up a short flight of steps, surmounted by a drip moulding carried on carved zoomorphic corbels — the one to the left in the form of a lion, the one to the right in the form of a grotesque beast.

The north wall of the courtyard garden has single-light rectangular window openings and larger two-light openings with stone mullions. A large first floor window opening contains a three-light stone traceried window in Perpendicular Gothic style with cusped heads, surmounted by a rectangular Tudor-style drip moulding.

The projecting entrance porch contains a Tudor-arched doorway flanked by weathered angle buttresses. These buttresses incorporate miniature colonnettes with stylised foliate capitals of High Victorian type, and are surmounted by a frieze of cusped Gothic panels and a foliated cornice, both raking over the doorway on the front face, and carrying bulky crocketed and finialled pinnacles at each extremity. In the centre of the frieze is a coat of arms carved in high relief. The side walls of the porch contain a traceried window opening surmounted by a rectangular drip moulding. To the east of the porch, a weathered buttress incorporating a circular column with a stylised foliate capital supports the base mouldings of a former canted oriel, now removed, at first floor level.

THE EAST FRONT

The east front has a central projecting gabled porch flanked on each side by shallow rectangular bays. The bays each contain a large square window opening, now missing its mullions, with a crenellated top to the wall between diagonal buttresses. The porch contains a triune arrangement of a doorway and sidelights divided by stone mullions, with cusped toplights, surmounted by a Gothic panelled gable containing a carved coat of arms, all recessed between angle buttresses which rise to corner pinnacles consisting of incomplete reset fragments. At the southern extremity of the east front is a projecting octagonal corner bay with crenellations.

THE SOUTH FRONT

The south front is comparatively plain in character, containing rectangular two-light stone mullioned window openings, with some bay divisions marked by plain buttresses that have been later capped by reset pinnacles, which were probably originally from the first floor parapet level. At the western end of the former south wall is a Tudor-arched doorway with drip moulding leading into an open area to the west of the courtyard garden.

THE WEST FRONT

The west front of the courtyard garden consists of a largely blank wall containing a segmental-arched former coach entrance. This archway is not in the Tudor or Gothic Revival style but more classicised in feel, with rusticated voussoirs, the two at the extremities at the springing line being of unusual scalloped form. The archway contains a pair of flat ironwork gates and is surmounted on the outside by a coat of arms carved in high relief. Above the archway on the inside of the west wall is the inscription plaque recording the two main phases of construction.

SETTING AND OUTBUILDINGS

Along the south side of the building is a terrace walk raised above the inclined grassy garden beyond on rubble stonework retaining walls surmounted by a balustraded sandstone parapet of stop-chamfered blocks supporting sandstone copings. This wall and parapet returns at the east end, in line with the building, and along its south face contains two bastion-like projections, each with pairs of diagonally placed stone steps down to the lower lawn. At the west end of the parapeted terrace is a short flight of broad stone steps between short square piers.

Within the terrace walk, against the south screen wall and facing the western bastion, is an open stone-pillared shelter with a hipped concrete roof. This may be a later creation assembled from earlier fragments, as it does not accord in style with either the Tudor or Gothic phases of the house.

Extending for a considerable distance to the west, in line with the house, is a roughly coursed rubble stone wall of plain character whose only special feature is a tall Gothic archway containing a pair of iron gates, surmounted by a stepped gable containing a circular datestone inscribed 1876. At the western extremity of this screen wall is a partly walled garden entered through an ironwork gatescreen which incorporates an elliptically arched overthrow. The walled garden has walls of rubble stonework lined in part on the inside with brickwork, and attached to the outer north-east corner of the walled garden is a two-storey, three-bay gabled house.

In the south-west corner of the car park is an L-shaped arrangement of outbuildings and an open modern picnic shelter constructed of various architectural elements taken from the main house, none of special interest in their rearranged form.

To the north-west of the house remains, the main avenue crosses a bridge carrying it over a minor ravine. The bridge has parapet walls of coursed sandstone with short square piers, over a skew-archway of brick vaulting, with a notched brickwork drip moulding. The entrance and exit to the estate are marked by modern gateways.